Carouselambra
by brihana25
Summary: Eight years after a hunt with John and Bobby that ended in disaster, Sam and Dean return to Johnston, Iowa for what looks to be a simple job. Complete summary inside. Warnings inside; please read them. Gen. COMPLETE
1. Prologue

**TITLE**: Carouselambra

**GENRE: **Gen

**CATEGORY: **Angst, Drama, H/C, Brotherly love

**SEASON**: One (between Faith and Route 666)

**RATING**: R

**PAIRING**: none

**WARNINGS: **dark, disturbing, and potentially triggery content. Rated for violence, language, implied threats of a sexual nature toward a minor, torture (aftermath only), and non-explicit, non-graphic, non-corporeal non-con

**WORD COUNT:** 41,100

**DISCLAIMER:** Supernatural, its characters and situations, are copyright Eric Kripke and Warner Bros. Entertainment (The CW). No infringement on, or challenge to, their status is intended. This piece of fiction was written strictly for the entertainment of other fans, and I am gaining no form of compensation for it.  
**MORE DISCLAIMERS:** This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual places and locations, is purely coincidental.

**SUMMARY**: Eight years after a hunt with John and Bobby that ended in disaster, Sam and Dean return to Johnston, Iowa for what looks to be a simple job. It isn't long before they realize that things are not always what they seem, and it's not so easy to escape a horror that refuses to stay dead. The reality of the situation flies in the face of everything they know about spirits and forces them to confront their biggest fears. With one Winchester struggling against a nightmare that keeps dragging him back under, and the other reeling from the knowledge of what his brother is willing to sacrifice to protect him, they will have to find the strength to stand together and defeat the ghost that haunts them both, once and for all.

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: This is my submission to the 2010 SPN/J2 Big Bang

Never-ending love and gratitude to whisper99, my partner in crime and most excellent alpha-bet, for encouraging me, correcting me, and helping me plug those plot holes. For all those times I didn't think I was going to make it and you told me I would, when I was a thousand words short with only an hour left on the deadline and you told me to shut up and write, when I wrote something stupid and didn't notice and you pointed it out in that special way you have, **thank you**.

Eternal thanks to 13chapters, switch842, and andreth47 for the loan of their eyes, their time, and their brains, for catching all the things that I missed. Betas don't come any better. Seriously, you guys are amazing. I was damn lucky to have you with me on this, and even luckier to be able to call you all my friends.

If you think this story is good, thank those four. If you think it sucks, blame me. :)

I was blessed with an incredibly talented artist for this challenge, and I couldn't possibly be happier. She took my words, and she made them into pictures that not only captured the mood I was trying to set, but details that match exactly what I saw in my mind as I was writing them. With every image she showed me, I was more and more blown away.

So I give huge, massive thanks and awe to spn_2008 for the amazing art she created for this story. You really should go tell her how fantastic it is.

* * *

**Prologue**

**Johnston, Iowa**

**January 24, 1998**

Sam knew that his father had a job to do, and he knew that there wasn't anyone else who could do it. He'd known that monsters were real since he was eight and a half years old, and he knew that someone had to protect the innocent from them. At least, someone had to kill the evil ones. He knew that person, more often than not, was going to be his father. But every now and then, he couldn't help but think that maybe the world should take care of itself. Just for one day.

This was one of those times.

"This isn't fair, Dad. It's bullshit, and you know it."

"Watch your mouth, Sam." It wasn't a threat, because John Winchester didn't do threats. It was an order, and it was one that John's tone made it clear that Sam had best obey.

Sam was almost tall enough to look his father in the eye. At fourteen and a half, he already stood just an inch shy of six foot. Even Dean had noticed how tall he was getting and was constantly making cracks about what a freak he was, but Sam thought he was more worried about his little brother getting taller than him than anything. Bobby said he looked like a wild mustang colt, all arms and legs with a long face and even longer hair.

John hadn't mentioned anything about Sam's sudden growth spurt, though. He hadn't given any indication that he'd even noticed. To Sam, it was just another sign that his father wasn't paying attention to his children the way a father should. Just like he wasn't right then.

John was bent down over the small table that served as his desk in that motel, sorting through a bunch of crumpled papers, and he was focused on his task. Sam stepped forward and leaned his hands against the edge of the table in the hopes of catching his father's eye. John glanced up quickly but looked back down just as fast.

"I don't wanna hear it," John said tiredly.

"I don't care," Sam shot back. "You don't have to do this tonight. It's just some stupid recon."

"It's 'stupid recon' that could save someone's life."

"But it's his birthday!"

When John looked up this time, his eyes were hard and his lips had narrowed. "What do you want me to do? Buy some balloons, hire a clown, bake him a cake?" John looked away again, pushing his papers around like there was some sort of order to the chaos. It was clear that he considered the subject closed. "He's not a little kid anymore."

"He's only nineteen," Sam argued.

"He's a man."

"He's still your son."

John slammed both hands down on the table and spun on Sam, holding up one finger as a warning. "Don't."

Six months earlier, Sam would have backed down. Six months earlier, he would have apologized and lowered his head and walked away. But a lot had changed in those six months, starting with the fact that Sam no longer backed down from anything or anyone. He'd seen and learned too much about what was hiding in the dark, about the truth that the people living their normal lives in their average homes and "safe" neighborhoods couldn't even being to imagine. He'd seen too many people get sucked into too many things beyond their control, and he'd sworn that it would never happen to him. He knew his own mind, he knew what he wanted from his life, and he didn't care if anyone disagreed with him – not even his father.

"You know how much he was looking forward to this, Dad. He never asks for anything, but he asked for this, and you said yes. You promised him. You can't take that away!"

"That is enough, Samuel!" John stepped closer, white-knuckled fists clenched at his sides, and Sam could feel the anger rolling off of his father in waves. John had rarely lost his temper with either of his sons through the years, but arguments with his youngest were starting to become common. Sam knew that the day was coming fast when he and his father would come to blows over something. It was inevitable.

Sam felt his own hand clenching in response.

"Hey!" a voice called out. "Knock it off!"

Neither of them had heard the door open, and neither of them had heard him walk in, but suddenly Dean was there, stepping between them, putting a hand on John's chest and pushing him away from Sam.

Sam couldn't believe it.

Not that Dean had stepped between them, because he'd been doing that a lot lately, but that he'd had to break up what had almost become an actual fight. That John had let his temper reach the point where he'd almost started throwing punches. That from the way John's hands were still clenched, at least one good swing was still a very real possibility. That Dean stood his ground between them, with both hands on his father's chest, holding him back. That Dean stayed there even though he had to know that if John did throw that punch at Sam, it would hit him instead.

_Happy fucking birthday, Dean._

"Enough, Dad."

Dean's voice was calm and even; Sam had heard that tone more and more often lately, too. It was the one Dean used when he had only a few seconds to defuse their father before he exploded.

Most of the time, it worked.

"That's enough."

Sam glared at John across Dean's shoulder. John, for his part, nodded at Dean and relaxed his hands. After a few seconds had passed, Dean dropped his arms to his sides, and John turned back to the table. Bobby had appeared at some point – Sam guessed that he had walked in with Dean and had stayed out of the way until it looked like the disaster had been averted – and the two older men were immediately hunched together over the table, talking quickly and quietly about something only they knew.

It was still too much for Sam.

"Stop treating this like it's a normal day!" he demanded.

This time John only glanced in Sam's general direction across his shoulder, and that was just to make sure that Dean was taking care of that last outburst.

And Dean was.

He grabbed Sam by the shoulder of his shirt and pulled him forward, stepping around behind him and pushing him toward the door that opened into the adjoining motel room that the brothers were sharing. "Go, Sam," he said softly.

"No, Dean," he protested, digging his heels into the carpet and spinning around. "Don't let him do this to you!"

"Sam. Go." Dean's teeth were pressed tightly together, as though he were using them to hold back words he didn't want to let himself say.

Sam squared his shoulders and shook his head as he straightened his back and pulled himself up to his full height.

Dean rolled his eyes as he reached across Sam's shoulder, grabbed the back of his shirt, and spun him toward the door again. One hard shove had Sam stumbling, trying not to trip over his own feet as the sudden momentum propelled him forward.

"Now!"

Sam's shoulders slumped as he walked. He could still hear Bobby and his father talking in the room behind him, but he wasn't paying attention to them anymore. He needed to talk to Dean, to convince him to tell John how much the promise of this night had meant to him. It was a conversation that was definitely more suited for the privacy of their room than in their father's, so he motioned for Dean to follow him through the door.

Dean had been planning this for weeks. The three of them were going to go out together, like any normal family celebrating a child's birthday. Dean had picked the movie the first day he'd looked – a horror movie about some demon named Azazel. He'd been looking forward to listening to John rip Denzel's demon hunting skills to shreds, and John had even joked that he was looking forward to doing it. When John had told him that Bobby was coming to Johnston, too, Dean hadn't even really tried to hide his smile. He'd have his whole family with him on his birthday, and that was really all Dean could hope for.

Sam knew for a fact that it was the only thing he'd asked for.

But that was all gone. Bobby was there, but he and John were going out to investigate something or other to do with whatever spirit or creature or monster it was that had brought them to Johnston in the first place. He and Dean were being left behind, but they'd actually both been okay with that at first. They had their plans, after all. Maybe John and Bobby wouldn't be with them, but they were going to eat chili dogs and cheese fries and go watch the movie. Then John had dropped the bombshell.

They weren't allowed to leave the motel until he and Bobby returned.

There'd been no explanation from their father, no reasoning, no excuse. Just more orders.

_"You will stay in these rooms while we're gone, do you hear me? If you leave them for any reason, I will whip your ass, and don't think for a second that you're big enough to stop me."_

Sam turned to face Dean as soon as he heard the door close behind them.

"You have to tell him," he said quickly. "Tell him how much this means to you. Tell him how long you've been planning it."

Dean shook his head and sighed. "Sam ..."

"No, Dean. He doesn't get to do this. He doesn't get to ruin your birthday just because he wants to!"

Dean plopped down on the end of his bed, then lay back across it. "It's not just because he wants to, and you know that. He's got a job to do."

"I don't give a damn about the job!" Sam declared. "I give a damn about him shitting on the one thing you asked him for. The one thing he promised you. Just one day, Dean, just one normal fucking day. Is that so much to ask?"

"Watch your damn mouth," Dean growled.

Sam threw his arms in the air in frustration as he flopped down on the side of his own bed. He sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "It's not fair," he said. "And it's not right. You're his son; he should care about your birthday."

Dean rolled over so that he was facing Sam and propped his head up with his hand. "That's the way the job goes. We can't just work when we want to, Sam. We have to work when we need to."

"Why can't it wait until morning?" he asked. "Why does it have to be now?"

"Because most spirits only come out at night," Dean explained with a tired-looking smile. Sam already knew that, of course, but it didn't change anything.

He let his hands dangle between his knees and looked across at his brother. "Sucks out loud, dude," he said, though he knew his voice didn't sound angry anymore. And he wasn't angry anymore. Irritated, yes. Betrayed. Ignored. Abandoned. Mostly on Dean's behalf, because for some reason that Sam could and would never understand, his brother wouldn't feel those things for himself, no matter what their dad did to him.

"Yeah, I know." Dean reached across the space between the beds and tapped Sam lightly on the knee with his fist. "But that's the gig." Dean rolled back to his back, his knees bent and feet touching the floor, and spread his arms wide across the bedspread as he stared up at the ceiling. "Not the first birthday I've missed, won't be the last."

Sam just lifted his head and stared at him. "It's not right, Dean."

Dean turned his head toward him and shrugged.

Sam drew a deep breath and prepared himself to launch into another conversation with Dean about the rights and wrongs of fathers ignoring their sons, but he never had the chance to start.

"Dean! Come here for a minute!"

"Don't go," Sam said softly. "You don't have to come running every time he calls."

Dean shook his head sadly, pushed himself up off the bed, and walked to the door. Just as his hand touched the knob, Sam spoke again.

"You shouldn't have to give up your birthday because he tells you to."

"It's not important, Sam," Dean said without looking at him. "Really. It's just another day."

"I'll fix it for you," Sam said. "I will. I don't know how, but this is gonna be one birthday you're never gonna forget."

Dean smiled at him one last time before walking out the door. "Of course it will, Sammy."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**Johnston, Iowa**

**April 30, 2006**

It wasn't the same room.

There was no need for the adjoining rooms this time, so they hadn't even thought of getting them. They were on the opposite end of the motel. There was a real desk in this room instead of a rickety old table in the corner. The bathroom was on the opposite side of the hallway.

It wasn't the same room, but it was close enough that it gave Sam the creeps.

He closed the door and walked toward the bed furthest from it. Dean had already claimed the other, laid his jacket across it, and was starting to pull things out of his bag. Sam put the bag of Chinese take-out he was carrying on the desk as he walked past it.

"Whose idea was this again?" Sam asked as he threw his duffel bag down on the bright orange bedspread. They'd had blue bedding the last time they were there. And again he told himself that it didn't matter, because it wasn't the same room.

Dean glanced up at him without stopping what he was doing. His shotgun was already laid out on the bed next to his jacket, as was his knife, and the pearl-handled Colt was in his hand.

"The hunt?" Dean said. "We talked about this."

"No, not the hunt," Sam said. He turned around and sat down on the foot of his bed. "The motel."

Dean shrugged and dropped the Colt on the bedspread, next to the shotgun. "We tried the other two. They were both full, remember?"

"Yeah, I know. It's just ..."

"Just what?" Dean's voice was steady, but it sounded tight.

"I've got a bad feeling about this, Dean," Sam admitted. "I mean, this place ..."

Dean sighed and flopped down on his own bed. "Hey, I don't like it either. But what choice do we have?" He ran his fingers through his hair quickly, then dropped his arms, slapping his own legs in the process. "Something's killing kids here, Sam. We gotta stop it."

"But what if it's ...?"

"It can't be," Dean interrupted. "He's dead. Salted and burned and rotting in Hell. Right?"

Sam nodded slowly. He knew that Dean was right. He knew that particular spirit was gone. He'd witnessed the end of that hunt firsthand.

"So." Dean pushed himself back to his feet and walked toward the bathroom. "What'd we get at the library?"

Sam turned around, bringing his knee up onto the bed as he reached into his bag to pull out his notebook. The motel hadn't been their first stop in Johnston this time around; if it had been, maybe they'd have been staying in a different one. But Sam had insisted on starting his research immediately, so they could finish the job and get the hell out of that town as quickly as possible. He flipped the cover of the notebook open and scanned the pages quickly.

"The first victim's name was David Harrison, nineteen years old. He was found in Chapel Hill Cemetery on April 2. They didn't find any signs of foul play, and they told the press they didn't think it was a suspicious death. He had a few bruises on his wrists, neck, and chest that were really faint and could have been traced to older injuries. The coroner ruled it a heart attack. Apparently, his heart just stopped beating."

The water came on in the bathroom sink, and Sam wondered just exactly what Dean had gotten on his hands that was bothering him so much. He'd been washing them every half hour at the library.

Dean's voice floated back at him through the open bathroom door. "Perfectly healthy nineteen year old kid drops dead because his heart stopped beating? Yeah, nothing suspicious about that."

_"People's hearts give out all the time, Dean."_

_"No they don't, Sam."_

"He was the one with the weird stuff on the ground around him, right?" Dean reappeared from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel.

"Yeah," Sam said. He concentrated on his brother's voice and shook off the memories that had been plaguing him for the past week. "Yeah, the reporter obviously didn't know what to make of it. Described it as the usual, generic 'Satanic ritual.' Nothing that they listed in the article sounds particularly Satanic ..."

"Is it ever Satanic when the reporters say it is?" Dean tossed the towel in the general direction of the sink and walked to the end of the hallway.

"But it does sound to me like David Harrison was messing with things he shouldn't have been."

"So, what, an altar of some sort? Think he summoned something?" Dean took the notebook from Sam's lap and started flipping through it for himself as he settled into the chair at the desk.

"I guess it's possible," Sam admitted. "That's a pretty peaceful death for a demon, though."

Dean nodded and continued flipping the pages. "The second kid?"

"Jonathan Wodtke, eighteen. His father found him in his own bedroom on April 16. Same cause of death, same pattern of faint bruises, and nothing in his room that didn't belong there."

"So the second kid wasn't doing whatever the first one was?"

"No," Sam answered, shaking his head. "And the third was Matthew Albers. He was nineteen, too. His dad and brother found him in the field next to the football stadium a week later. He died exactly the same way as the other two."

He could see Dean's mind working, processing the information that he'd just been given.

"So who are the other two?"

Sam tilted his head in confusion. "What other two?"

"The one they were supposed to find on the ninth, and the one they should have found today."

Sam knew he was staring at his brother blankly, and he probably looked pretty ridiculous, but he really had no idea what Dean was talking about.

Dean sighed and closed the notebook, slipping his finger between the pages to keep his place as he did. "Look at the pattern, Sam. This thing is killing them on either Saturday night or early Sunday morning, and it's leaving their bodies to be found on Sunday. So, where are the second and fifth victims? The ones that died on the eighth and last night?"

Sam ran his fingers through his hair, both frustrated and embarrassed that he hadn't noticed that there even was a pattern. "I ..." He shook his head and looked toward the wall. "I don't know. I didn't check to see if anyone else had gone missing."

"Gettin' a little absent minded there, professor?" Dean flashed him a quick smile and leaned back in the chair. "So you can look those up later, because no way in hell are we leaving any victims unaccounted for. That never ends well."

Sam couldn't suppress the shiver that ran up his spine. He and Dean both knew all-too-well the things that could happen when victims weren't found for long periods of time. The first time they'd learned their lesson about it had been in that very motel, eight years earlier.

"Any connection?"

Sam blinked again. Dean was right; he was slipping. But it was more than that, and he knew it. He was distracted as hell, and every time he tried to focus on their current hunt, his mind wandered off into another set of memories, none of which were pleasant. "What?"

Dean smiled indulgently. "Connection? Between the three victims we do know about?"

"Not to each other, no. Not really, anyway," he said. "They probably knew each other, or at least knew of each other. Town of less than nine thousand people, the high school probably doesn't have more than eleven or twelve hundred students, but it looks like that was as far as it went. David quit school when he was seventeen, didn't have a job, lived with his dad. Jonathan was a senior, captain of the football team, wrestled and ran track. Matthew was salutatorian of his graduating class, and was a freshman Economics major at Iowa State. He was just home for the weekend, for his brother's birthday."

"Yeah, doesn't sound like they'd be buddies." Dean flipped through the pages one more time and then looked up at Sam. "I thought you had pictures."

"Oh, yeah." Sam reached into his bag again and pulled out the three print-outs he'd made at the library. He handed them to Dean, glancing around the room again as he did. The creepy feeling he'd had ever since they'd walked through the door hadn't gone away, and, if anything, it was getting stronger. He couldn't get the memories of their last stay in that motel out of his head, couldn't stop thinking about what had happened in Nebraska the week before, and couldn't shake the feeling that someone – or something – was staring at them.

Dean didn't seem to notice his brother's distraction, or at least he didn't mention it if he did. He was staring down at the faces on the papers, and his eyes narrowed slightly when he turned from one picture to the other.

"Something wrong?" Sam asked.

"Um ... maybe." Dean scratched his head absently. "Did you notice how much they looked like each other?"

"Not really, no," he said slowly. "I don't think I even really looked at them, just printed them out." He shifted around on the bed, growing more and more uncomfortable with every second that passed. "I don't know what's going on, man, but ever since we got here, I just can't concentrate on anything." He shook his head again. "Why, do they look alike?"

"Oh, yeah," Dean answered. "We might actually have a problem here."

"Why?"

Dean held all three pictures in his hand and fanned them out so Sam could see them all at one time. Sam leaned forward to inspect them more closely, but what he saw had him drawing back almost immediately. His eyes jumped back and forth between the three known victims and his brother.

"Holy shit," he breathed.

"Holy shit is right," Dean muttered.

"Why the hell do they all look like you?"

"Gotta be a coincidence, right?" Dean asked. He turned the photos back around and looked down at them again. "I mean, it can't be ..."

"He's dead," Sam insisted. "Remember?"

"Yeah," Dean said, shaking his head to clear away whatever thoughts he'd been having. "Just a coincidence. Okay." He tucked the pictures into the notebook and handed it back to Sam. "You get your laptop out, start digging. Find us our missing victims."

Dean stood and walked to his bed, digging through his duffel bag quickly as Sam took his place at the desk and plugged his computer in. While it was booting up, Sam opened the bag of rapidly cooling Chinese food, pulled out an eggroll and took a bite. "What are you gonna do?" he asked as he sat down.

"I'm gonna take a shower," Dean answered. He held up the clothes in his hand briefly before disappearing down the hallway. "Holler if ya find something."

"Hey, are you gonna eat?"

Sam jumped when the bathroom door closed. As he started to turn back to the computer, his eyes were drawn to Dean's bed. Something had changed. He pushed himself to his feet slowly and walked over to it, noticing immediately what was wrong.

Dean's Colt, with the wrought iron rounds, wasn't there anymore.

Sam sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, turning toward the bathroom when he heard the shower start.

_"Just a coincidence."_

Yeah, right.

* * *

**1998**

Dean closed the door quietly behind him, hoping against hope that Sam would just stay in their damn room until John and Bobby were gone.

He loved his father and his brother both, and there was no denying that, but sometimes he thought he might be starting to get tired of them. Things had been changing lately, and not for the better. It was really looking like John and Sam couldn't even be in the same room for more than ten minutes without fighting about something. Dean and Bobby had only taken three or four minutes to get the weapons out of Bobby's car, and had returned to find John and Sam on the verge of an all-out fist fight.

Dean walked across the room to where John and Bobby stood at the foot of the bed Bobby was taking for the night, stuffing their pockets with salt and loading their guns with consecrated iron rounds. Dean knew from talking to Bobby outside that they were only planning on doing some basic recon and weren't really intending to confront the spirit they were hunting, but it was always best to go out prepared for anything.

_"Thing about spirits, boy, if you go diggin' up the skeletons in their closet? They're like as not to try and turn you into one."_

John and Bobby had spent the whole day researching the spirit they were hunting, first digging through old newspapers at the local library, and then digging through an abandoned, falling-down house on the other side of town. They were mostly convinced they had the right person pegged as the spirit, but they wanted to be sure. If everything went as planned, and they got the confirmation they were needing, they'd have a salt and burn the next night. The final proof they needed was the missing body of the spirit's first victim, and they were almost positive that they knew where he was.

"Yes, sir?" Dean said as he stepped to his father's side.

John didn't look up at him and continued loading his shotgun.

"I know I've already told you this, Dean, but you need to stay in the motel. With all of the windows and doors salted. Do you understand me?"

"Of course I do."

Dean didn't think that his tone of voice was wrong, didn't think that it made him sound like he wasn't taking his responsibilities seriously or like he was being disrespectful. He took everything John said and every task John laid out for him seriously. He always had and always would, and he'd never thought he left room for John to doubt him. But apparently his father took exception to the tone he was using, because he looked up from his gun with his eyes narrowed.

Dean took an instinctive step back.

"This is serious, Dean. Very serious. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you keep Sammy in this room. Am I making myself clear? He cannot go outside."

And suddenly, Dean understood. He tilted his head in surprise. "Is this about why we're here?" he asked, keeping his voice low enough that Sam couldn't hear if he were listening against the bedroom door. "What the hell are you hunting, Dad?"

"A nasty piece of work," Bobby answered.

"A nasty piece of work that's a threat to Sam?" Dean's senses snapped to full alert. Taking care of Sam had been his job for as long as he could remember. He had always considered it – and still did, and probably always would – the single most important responsibility he had. "Dad?"

John didn't respond; he turned back to the desk, gathered up all of the papers there, and shoved them into his bag. Bobby did look up at Dean, though, with something approaching hatred in his eyes. He'd Bobby long enough to know that what was there wasn't aimed at any human walking the Earth. Whatever this thing was, if Bobby hated it that much, then it wasn't getting anywhere near Sam.

"I need to know what I'm dealing with here, Dad. What is it? Is it after Sam?"

John tucked the last of the weapons into one of the two duffel bags that he and Bobby had been packing and zipped it closed. Bobby lifted up the smaller bag that he had loaded and walked out the door. As John picked his duffel up and slung it across his shoulder, he finally made eye contact with his oldest son.

"Keep the doors closed, the salt lines down, and Sam in the room, and you won't have to deal with anything."

"Dad," Dean said again as he followed his father to the door. "What the hell is it?"

John shook his head before slowly turning to face Dean. "You don't wanna know." Dean opened his mouth to protest, but John reached out and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It'll be all right, Dean. It's not after Sammy, and besides, even if it was, it's not gonna get him, is it?"

"No, sir."

John slapped Dean gently on the shoulder and gave him a small, tired smile. "Sorry about your birthday, dude. I'll make it up to ya, okay?"

Dean nodded without answering, because he didn't trust himself to speak, and John stepped out the door.

He closed and locked the door the second his father cleared the threshold. He'd been right when he told Sam that his birthday didn't matter against what their father was hunting. Particularly if the thing he was after wanted Sam.

He picked the salt up from the bed where John had left it and started laying down lines thick and deep enough to keep Satan himself from coming in.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**2006**

Dean knew exactly what was going on with his brother, and he didn't like it, but he wasn't going to call attention to it.

It wasn't at all like Sam to let things get to him the way they were doing on that job. That wasn't to say that Sam wasn't ever affected by the kinds of things they saw on a daily basis, because sometimes he was, but Dean had never known him to let it affect his research before.

Zack Mason, an eighteen year old pep band drummer with green eyes and light brown hair, had been in the high school parking lot after a baseball game on April 8 and hadn't been seen since. His name should have been in the notebook with the other three to begin with, not added an hour later.

The same was true of Brad Thompson, the fifth victim, whose name they had learned from a local radio station. He'd been found somewhere north of town a few hours earlier, but the police weren't releasing any other information, not even his age. It would be days before the autopsy results would be available, but Dean had decided to pay the police a visit in the morning. With the bodies of four dead teenagers showing up in as many weeks, and a fifth still missing, the locals wouldn't be surprised to see a couple of young FBI agents show up.

But having the information finally in their hands didn't make him feel any better about not having had it to start with. Dean wasn't supposed to figure out they had missing victims before Sam did. That just wasn't the way it was supposed to work.

He wasn't going to give Sam too much heat over it, because double-checking everything himself and keeping an extra eye on Sam to make sure that he wasn't going to completely lose it was actually working in Dean's best interest. Helping Sam stay focused in spite of his issues was giving him a good excuse to not even think about his own. Not that he actually had any real issues with being in that town, let alone that motel. Everything he'd come away from Johnston with had been dealt with and packed away years ago.

He glanced back across his shoulder to make sure that Sam was still with him, then looked back at the field they were walking toward.

Their recon trip to the cemetery hadn't revealed much that they hadn't already known, but it did give them confirmation that David Harrison had been attempting to summon something on the night of April 1. They didn't know if he'd succeeded or not because weeks of April weather, wind and rain, had washed away whatever evidence of sulfur might have been left behind, but the shape of the symbol burned into the grass made it clear that he'd at least tried.

They'd considered seeing if they could get in to see Jonathan Wodtke's bedroom, but had agreed that eleven o'clock at night was too late for any sort of legitimate investigators to come calling about a two week old death, especially one that had been ruled natural, so they'd decided to hold that back for morning, too, after they'd seen Brad Thompson's body.

So from the cemetery, they'd gone straight to the high school. The field Matthew Albers had been found in was next to the football stadium, only a few hundred feet from where Zack Mason had disappeared.

The Impala was in the parking lot behind them, tucked up between the building and the physical plant. They'd done a quick inspection of the parking lot and had found no sign of what had happened to Zack, which didn't surprise them since it had been two weeks. So they focused their attention on Matthew, and they were walking across a darkened basketball court, heading for the field just ahead of them.

"How far out was he?" Dean asked.

"Almost directly across from the end zone," Sam answered. Dean could imagine him gesturing ahead of them with his hand. They'd brought their flashlights but decided to leave them off unless they absolutely needed them. The nearest houses to where they were going looked to be about two hundred yards away, and they didn't need to attract any attention to themselves. "About another three hundred feet or so."

They walked in silence again, Dean watching his feet carefully to make sure they didn't trip over anything in the dark. He didn't lift his head until he heard Sam's voice behind him.

"Right here."

Dean looked up and started to turn, but something across the street grabbed his attention and he stopped. There, between two of the small houses, lit by a single yellowish street light – a tree-lined driveway with no house at the end of it. Just an empty lot.

"Dean?"

A feeling of cold, deeper than he'd felt in years, deeper even than the feeling of a reaper stealing his soul, swept across him, and even though he could feel beads of sweat starting to run down his back, he shivered.

"Dean, what's wrong?"

He was frozen to the spot; his muscles wouldn't move and his eyes refused to turn away from that lonely driveway.

"Dean?"

He jumped when he felt the hand on his shoulder, spun around and brought his hands up to defend himself.

"Hey, hey, hey."

Two hands, one on each shoulder, but he couldn't tell if they were holding him still or holding him up. He blinked repeatedly, trying to focus on the person in front of him, and he concentrated on breathing, because apparently he'd stopped at some point and he really needed to start again.

"Look at me, Dean."

Sam. He needed to concentrate on Sam. Focus on Sam. He could do that.

"You okay?" he asked, though he had no idea why he'd think that anything was wrong.

"I'm fine," Sam answered gently. "Little worried about you, though. What just happened?"

"No, no, no," Dean said, stepping back and batting Sam's hands away. "Dude, hands off. I'm fine. Just ..." He glanced back over his shoulder and saw it there, the driveway inviting him to walk up to a house that was no longer there, but that for some reason he couldn't get out of his mind.

"Just what?"

"There's something over there," he finally said. "See that driveway? The one with no house?"

"Yeah," Sam answered as he stepped up to stand beside Dean. "What about it?"

"I don't know, I just ..." Dean lowered his head and rubbed his eyebrows with his fingers. "We need to go see what's over there. You picking up any bad mojo or heeby vibes from it or anything?"

Sam shook his head no and for once, he let the psychic thing go unanswered. "Should I be?" he asked hesitantly.

"One way to find out."

He started walking toward it, keeping himself low to the ground to avoid being seen. He didn't need to look back to know that Sam was behind him. Maybe it was irresponsible of them to be running off in the middle of a job, but it was only for a couple of minutes. And besides, what if whatever was across the street turned out to be relevant to the case they were working on? It might be important.

Dean jumped the ditch easily and jogged across the road. He could see now that their worries about being spotted from the houses on that side of the street were groundless. Of the seven houses there, five of them were empty, and from the looks of them, they'd been that way a while.

He stopped at the end of the driveway and stood there, staring down the line of trees while he waited for Sam to catch up. They were more shrubs than trees, he realized, overgrown but still not very tall, and the driveway itself was being reclaimed by the grass that was growing up between the rocks. The whole scene just struck him as wrong. When he closed his eyes, he saw a neatly trimmed hedgerow lining a freshly rocked driveway that led to a modest but cared-for white house with a big front porch on it.

Both versions filled him with a fear that he didn't understand and would never admit to feeling.

"So what are we looking for?" Sam asked.

"I guess we'll know when we find it."

Since he was no longer worried about being seen, Dean pulled out his flashlight and shined it on the ground in front of them. Sam did the same. Dean could hear the wind rustling through the leaves and their own footsteps on the rocks, but those were the only sounds he heard. As they neared where the house had once stood, he could see the shape of the foundation still sticking up slightly from the ground.

"The basement's still here," Sam commented.

Dean tried to swallow the lump that was forming in his throat, but it wouldn't budge. It, and the feeling of dread that had welled up from the pit of his stomach, had been his constant companions since he'd first seen the remains of the house in the distance.

He knew where they were now, knew where he was going, knew every inch of this property. He'd never forget it, could never forget it, no matter how badly he wanted to. Sam followed along behind him silently, shining his flashlight over the surface of the concrete as he walked around to the back of the house and opened the bulkhead he'd known would be there.

"Dean, how do you ...?"

"I've been here before."

He walked down the stairs and turned the knob on the old basement door. He wasn't surprised to find out that it was open.

"When?" He could hear the suspicion in Sam's voice, and he didn't really blame him. They'd only been to Johnston once before; there could have been no other time.

Dean pushed the door open, but couldn't make himself step inside. He'd been ignoring the way his heart pounded in his chest for at least five minutes, but standing in the doorway, listening to his own blood rush through his head, feeling his chest seize up until breathing was almost impossible ... he couldn't pretend anymore.

Sam pushed past him, despite the hand that darted out to stop him. "Sam, get back here!"

"What is this?" Sam asked, ignoring Dean's order and turning slowly in the center of the room, shining his light up and down the walls, from ceiling to floor. A door in the far wall piqued his curiosity further, and he stepped forward.

"Please don't."

He wasn't begging, because Dean Winchester didn't beg. But damned if he wasn't ready to plead with Sam on his hands and knees if he'd just get the hell out of there.

Sam turned toward him slowly, suspicion written clearly on his face. "What is this place, Dean? What's behind that door?"

What was behind the door? Dean honestly didn't know. He honestly didn't want to know, either. But just the thought, just the possibility, that Sam would open it and see the same thing he saw every time he'd closed his eyes since they'd gotten to that damned town ...

But Sam wasn't listening to him. Sam was going to open the door. Dean wanted to stop him, wanted to grab his brother and pull him out of there, but he couldn't move. He was frozen in place, standing in the door like a statue, and all he could do was watch Sam reach for the doorknob, turn it and pull it open.

And immediately step away from it with his hand across his face.

"Oh, shit, man." Sam looked across at Dean through the gloom of the basement, the flashlights throwing just enough light to allow them to see each other. "I think we just ... fuck. We just found Zack Mason."

Dean leaned back against the wall, hoping it would be enough to keep him on his feet, and fought to control what was going on in his mind. He dealt with stuff like this every single day. Why was this one case screwing with him so badly? There was nothing left in Johnston that could hurt them; he didn't have anything to be afraid of.

"His house," was all he said out loud, but he knew it was enough. He could feel Sam across the room, heard him slam the door and start walking back toward the entrance.

Ignoring his rapid heartbeat wasn't slowing it down. Pretending he could draw a full breath wasn't helping him get one. Brushing off the throbbing behind his eyes wasn't making it stop or making his thoughts any clearer. Wrapping his arms around himself, rubbing his hands up and down them and trying to get warm wasn't making his blood run any faster. And trying to convince himself that he was anywhere other than where he was wasn't working at all.

"His house," he repeated, and wondered if he'd really said it the first time at all. Everything was starting to feel so surreal, grey clouds and bright lights floating and flashing across his vision, the walls were moving and the ceiling was shrinking, sounds coming muffled to his ears, coldness seeping in to every inch of his body, sapping his strength. "His basement."

And then he was falling into himself, watching his thoughts be pulled and shoved away, and he knew what was happening. He thought he opened his mouth to scream, but whether or not he actually did, he'd never know. He could see the darkness coming for him, and no matter how hard he fought it, it was going to take him.

He could hear Sam calling his name from a distance, fuzzy and garbled and real, but he couldn't get enough breath in his lungs to answer. His vision went completely black, his lungs froze, his heart fluttered, and his knees buckled, and one last thought passed through his mind before he got pulled under.

_"Run, Sam!"_

* * *

**1998**

"But why can't we go anyway?" Sam asked.

He'd come out of their room as soon as he'd heard the door close, so he'd seen Dean laying the salt lines. He hadn't asked him why he was doing it, which was just fine by Dean. He'd followed him from room to room while he did it, though, and had been talking almost non-stop about sneaking out and going to Des Moines the whole time.

"Bobby's car is still here, and he left the keys on the table. You know we've got time. Twenty minutes there, two hours for the movie, twenty minutes back. And Dad won't be back until morning."

Dean looked up from the television that he was pretending to watch. "You want to steal Bobby's car to go see a movie?"

"Not steal," Sam insisted as he sat down next to Dean on the foot of their father's bed. "Just borrow. He'll never know. Neither one of them will."

"No." He checked the shotgun in his lap once more, making sure that it was loaded and ready to fire if necessary.

"But you wanted to ..."

"I said no, Sam. And I meant it." He'd considered telling Sam what John and Bobby had said about the spirit they were hunting, about it being a nasty piece of work, and about Dean's own conclusion that it was a threat to Sam, but he'd decided against it. For all his big talk, even bigger mouth and freakish growth spurt, Sam was still just a kid, and the longer Dean could keep him in the dark about the more unthinkable parts of their family business, the better.

"Dad said stay here, so we're staying here."

Sam jumped to his feet and started pacing around the room, and he suddenly looked very much like the wild horse that Bobby was always comparing him to. He looked like a mustang in a corral, chomping at the bit and wanting nothing more than to jump the fence.

Sam had always needed the feeling of freedom more than Dean did, had needed to be able to make his own decisions and do things his own way. In a way, Dean envied him that, but in others, he didn't. Dean knew and understood that the rules and restrictions they lived with were necessary, and he accepted them, but Sam's need for independence sometimes overshadowed his common sense. It was a potentially dangerous combination, and it was starting to make it harder for Dean to protect him.

"This is stupid!" Sam declared, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. "It's like we're grounded, but we didn't do anything wrong. And how can he ground you, anyway? You're an adult. I don't see any reason why we can't ..."

"Because Dad said 'no,'" Dean explained as calmly as he could manage. "And so did I." He sighed at Sam's expression, the mixture of anger, disbelief and betrayal that was becoming an uncomfortably common one for him to wear. "Go take a shower, Sam."

"Just listen to me, Dean."

"No. I'm done listening. You've been saying the same things over and over for the past half hour anyway, so, no. Go to our room and take a shower. It'll help clear your head."

"My head doesn't need to clear," Sam said. His tone was biting, and he'd crossed his arms across his chest.

Dean sighed. "All right. But mine does, okay? And if you don't get in that shower and cool the hell down, I'm gonna lose it and probably kick your ass. Got it?"

Sam backed down immediately, lowering his head, shoulders, and arms. "Okay," he answered with a nod. "But I'm only doing it to placate you."

Dean had to smile at that, because he was pretty damn sure that Sam thought he didn't know what 'placate' meant. He'd noticed recently that Sam was starting to use a lot of uncommon or just plain old big words when he talked, and Dean was starting to think that he was doing it just to irritate or confuse the people around him. Dad almost always knew what he was saying, though, and it made things interesting when Dean made it clear that he understood him, too.

"I don't give a damn if you're doing it to placate the gods of personal hygiene, Sam. As long as you do it."

Sam snorted, though Dean couldn't tell if it was from irritation or humor. Probably a bit of both. But he did walk into their room, and a minute later, Dean heard the shower start running. He smiled to himself as he turned back to the television. He frowned at the screen and reached for the remote control. Had he really been watching The Outsiders this whole time? He sure didn't remember anything he'd seen if he had been.

"Stupid kids," he muttered to himself as he watched the main characters climb through the window of a burning church. But even still, except for all that 'stay gold' crap, it was an okay movie. Matt Dillon was cool.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up just as what felt like a cold breeze blew through the room and ruffled his hair. He dropped the remote and jumped to his feet, shotgun at the ready. He searched the room with his eyes, looking into every corner and shadow, but there was nothing there. He drew a breath and let it out slowly, checking to see if his exhale was visible, but it wasn't. His heart was still hammering in his chest, and he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching him, invisible eyes boring into his back and shoulders like a drill, but he was alone.

Dean took another deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Every single access point to both rooms was salted. He had his shotgun. Nothing had gotten in, and nothing was getting in. He was just a bit on edge, that was all. Just a little jumpy.

But still, better safe than sorry.

He turned off the television and walked into the room he was sharing with Sam, glancing down the small hallway that led to the bathroom as he rounded the end of his bed and sat down. He didn't bother to turn the television on in there, choosing instead to just sit with his shotgun across his lap, keeping watch.

Almost as soon as he'd settled on the bed, he was on his feet again, but it was through no choice of his own. His shotgun flew one way and he flew the other. The gun slid to a stop against the far wall of the room, and Dean slammed into the exterior wall, between the door and the window, with enough force to crack the plaster behind him. After taking a second to recover from having the wind knocked out of him, he lifted his head and looked around the room frantically.

Sam was still in the shower, totally unaware that anything was happening. Dean was weaponless and pinned to the wall directly across from the hallway. A pasty-faced older man with wild hair and even wilder eyes was standing in the middle of the room.

And Dean could see right through him.

* * *

**2006**

"Shit, Dean!"

Dean's silent scream was the only warning Sam got that his brother was going down, and going down hard. He did manage to reach Dean before he hit the floor, but not before he'd smacked his head on the wall behind him.

"Okay, it's okay. Come on, Dean. Wake up." He shifted Dean's limp body around, trying to sit him down on the stairs without dropping him. "Dean!"

_He jumped the smoldering pile of rawhead, grabbed the front of Dean's jacket, and pulled him up out of the water. Dean's head flopped around limply, so he put his right hand against his brother's cheek to hold him up. It was too dark to see much, and it didn't look like Dean was breathing. But it was the unnatural stillness that scared him the most._

"Shit, shit, shit." Sam shook his head quickly. He needed to concentrate on now, in this basement, not then in that other one. "Okay, we can do this. You hear me, Dean? We're doing this. You and me."

It wasn't like Sam had never seen Dean have a panic attack, because he'd had them before, after their last stay in Johnston. But it had been almost eight years since he'd really had one, and Sam didn't think he'd ever had one that had made him pass out. But then again, everything about this job was messing with him, so why wouldn't it be messing with Dean, too?

Not for the first time, Sam wished that they had passed this hunt on to someone else, someone who wasn't them. At the very least, they shouldn't have come into it alone. Because it was pretty damn obvious that neither one of them was handling it quite as well as they wanted to think they were.

"We're outta here," Sam said as he put his arms around Dean's waist and hefted him up and over his shoulder. He took a few seconds to get himself settled under the extra weight and started climbing the stairs. As soon as they were outside again, Sam put Dean down on the ground and propped him up against the side of the bulkhead.

"Stay here," he said, though he was fairly sure that Dean wasn't going to be going anywhere of his own volition for quite a while. "I'll be right back."

Sam dashed back into the basement, pulled his coat sleeve down over his hand and wiped the handle of the door he'd opened. He glanced around quickly to make sure that he wasn't forgetting anything in his haste to leave, picked up the flashlight Dean had dropped when he fell, then wiped Dean's fingerprints off of the outside door and pulled it shut behind him. Lastly, he kicked the bulkhead cover closed and wiped its handle too, just to be safe.

He'd worry about the dead body later. It seemed cold and callous to think, but if it was Zack Mason, he wasn't going anywhere. Sam could make an anonymous call to the police any time.

"Let's go, Dean."

Sam tucked both flashlights into the bag he carried, zipped it shut, and moved the strap from his shoulder to across his chest. Then he scooped Dean up onto his shoulder once more.

"Damn, man. You need to cut back on the cheeseburgers."

Sam shifted Dean around into a fireman's carry, wrapped his arms around Dean's right arm and leg, and started walking. For the first time, it occurred to him that the Impala was almost a quarter of a mile away, in the high school parking lot. But it didn't matter. He needed to get Dean back to the motel, make sure he hadn't given himself a concussion when he fell, and get him to wake up. He just needed to keep his thoughts focused on Dean, keep them from taking off on their own again, and keep from thinking about that creepy feeling he had, that someone was watching them everywhere they went.

He shuddered slightly as he crossed the street and stepped into the field again.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**2006**

Sam was still carrying him across the field when Dean woke up, and he woke up swinging.

Sam reacted quickly, intending to lay him gently on the ground, but Dean wasn't having any part of it. The second his feet hit the grass, he shoved Sam away, knocked himself off-balance, and fell on his ass.

"Hey, Dean. Hey."

"Stay the fuck away!" Dean shoved himself back with his hands, his heels skidding on the dew-dampened grass as he scrambled to escape. "The fuck off me!"

Sam held his hands out to his sides with his palms turned up and out, assuming the least threatening position he could. He forced himself to speak calmly and managed to keep his voice gentle, which surprised him, because what he really wanted to do was freak the hell out.

"Hey, it's me. Sam."

"You stay away from Sam!"

"No, Dean." Sam knelt down as close to his brother's side as he dared. One thing he remembered clearly from the time when panic attacks were common was that when Dean got like this, there was always danger of a fist striking out and catching him. "I am Sam. Look at me."

Dean looked at him then, for the first time since he'd hit the ground. In the distant lights from the parking lot, Sam could see how wild and unfocused Dean's eyes were, and how truly terrified he was. It didn't last long, only a few seconds, but it was long enough to be unsettling, because Dean never looked like that.

Dean blinked a few times, seemed to get hold of himself, and looked up at Sam again.

"Sammy? You okay?" He glanced around the field nervously. "Where'd he go? Why are you still here? I told you to run!"

So maybe he'd been too hasty thinking Dean had gotten hold of himself.

"It's okay, Dean. Calm down. He's not here. He never was."

"Yes, he was!" Dean argued. He lurched forward and grabbed the front of Sam's jacket with his left hand, pulling him close. "He was just here. He threw me into the wall, and I told you to run, and ..."

Sam laid his hand atop Dean's on his jacket. "Look around you. Do you see a motel room?"

Dean glanced around again, shaking his head quickly.

"What you're talking about? Happened eight and a half years ago. He's dead."

"What?" Dean blinked again, and genuine confusion replaced the nervousness and anxiety on his face. "No, he was just here."

"You hit your head in that basement, you blacked out." Sam knew he was leaving out the part about Dean having passed out before he hit his head, but since Dean would never admit that, there really was no point in saying it. He reached out with his left hand slowly, carefully pressing on Dean's head behind his right ear. There was nothing he could feel, no noticeable lump, but he'd check it again at the motel just to make sure. "What you saw wasn't real; it was all in your head."

"Not real," Dean repeated. He closed his eyes and let his head fall forward. "Nothing happened. Just a dream."

"Yeah, man," Sam said. "Just a dream."

When Dean opened his eyes again, there wasn't a single trace of any of the emotions that had been in them before. Instead, they were filled with what might have been anger and what was definitely embarrassment. He let go of Sam's jacket quickly.

"What the hell, dude?"

"I don't know."

Sam lowered himself to sit on the ground next to Dean, pulled his right knee up and rested his arm across it. "I don't think we should have come here, Dean. We should have sent Caleb, or maybe Pastor Jim could have found someone."

"Why?"

"Because we're acting like this! You just had a panic attack! A panic attack, man, you haven't had one of those in years. And I'm not much better. I'm barely functioning, can't concentrate, and I can't shake this feeling that ..." Sam threw his hands up in exasperation. "I just think, I don't know, maybe we've got PTSD or something?"

"So take a Midol."

"Dean!"

"Yeah, I know, not funny. Whatever. But Sam, we're not ... I mean ... what trauma?"

"What trauma?" Sam had to wonder sometimes how Dean could keep a straight face when he said things like that. "What? Were you even here the last time?"

"Yeah, Sam, I'm pretty sure I was." Dean's voice was angry and tight, but he calmed down almost immediately. "And guess what? Nothing happened."

Sam just shook his head, because there was really nothing he could say that wouldn't end badly.

Dean rolled to his hands and knees and pushed himself to his feet. He was a bit unsteady, prompting Sam to jump to his own feet and move a bit closer to him. "Dude, back off. I can walk."

"I know," Sam said, but he didn't step back.

"Where's my car?"

"Right over there." Sam pointed it out. The dark shape against the school building was both familiar and comfortable.

Dean grunted as he started walking, and they headed back to the car together. Sam stayed close by his side the entire time. Neither of them spoke as they walked, or on the drive back to the motel. Both of them were too wrapped up in their own memories to even consider trying to keep each other company.

* * *

Sam walked into the room, tossed the car keys on the desk, and went straight to his bed, closing his eyes as he flopped down across it. Dean shut and locked the door behind them, and Sam heard some scraping sounds that he recognized as Dean fixing the salt line.

"What do we do now?" he asked without opening his eyes.

"You can do whatever you want," Dean answered tiredly. "Just stay in the room. I'm gonna take a shower."

Sam cracked his eyes open and glanced at Dean. There was some mud on his jeans, from where he'd fallen in the field, but he wasn't anywhere near as dirty as he usually got on a job. Sam made a mental note to start keeping track of Dean's sudden obsession with personal hygiene. It was a small thing, and it might mean nothing, but it was a sudden change in behavior. And with the way things were going, chances were pretty good that it was a sign of something much bigger.

"I think I should probably call the police," Sam said. "Let them know where Zack Mason is."

"It can wait." Dean walked past Sam and toward the bathroom. "Because you can't call them from here, and you sure as hell aren't going out alone to look for a payphone."

Sam sighed deeply. He was tired all the way to his bones, and he just wanted this day to be over. "Dean ..."

"Later, Sam," Dean said as he closed the bathroom door. He sounded as weary as Sam felt.

Sam reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his phone, then held it arms' length and stared at it. Dean was right; he couldn't call the police from the room phone, because they'd trace it too easily, and the same was true of his cell phone. He just felt like there was something more he should be doing, someone he should be calling.

He shot up straight on the bed and started scrolling through his contact list. He pressed the dial button almost immediately.

No one answered, but then again, he hadn't been expecting anyone to. It was almost two in the morning in Iowa, and he had no idea where the person he was calling actually was. It didn't really matter when he called, though, and he knew that. He wasn't getting anything but voicemail. It wasn't going to be enough, and he knew that, too. It hadn't been enough the week before, and it wasn't going to be enough now, but he didn't know what else to do.

"Dad ... Dad, it's Sam. Listen, I know ... you didn't call me back last time, and I just ... I thought you might wanna know that Dean's okay. Or, I guess, I mean, he's alive, and he's not sick anymore. But he's not really okay. Neither of us is. We're ... Dad, we're in Johnston, Iowa. And I don't know what we're up against here, but we really can't do this alone. Dean's blacking out and I'm ... I think I'm losing it, Dad. We need help." Sam swallowed hard and forced himself to keep going. "I just wanted to ... I don't know. I really need you to call me back, Dad, okay? I just ... I really need you to do that."

He couldn't think of anything to else to say, so he flipped the phone closed and pressed it to his forehead. It had been a waste of time, and he knew it, but it had made him feel a little better at least. John knew where they were and what they were doing, and even if they didn't get the same from him, well, he really should know that Dean wasn't dead, even if he hadn't bothered to call and find out for himself.

The sound of the shower cut off, and a couple of minutes later, Dean stepped out of the bathroom wearing clothes that he had to have stolen from Sam. Dean didn't own any sweatpants, and the grey t-shirt he was wearing was at least one size too big. Sam shook his head and wondered again exactly what was going on in his brother's head. Dean never got dressed to go to bed; he slept in his shorts and maybe a shirt, if it was chilly.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked as Dean walked past him.

Dean shook his head and threw back the blankets on his bed. "Just cold. I'll give 'em back tomorrow."

"No," Sam said. "It's okay. But you don't have a fever or anything, do you?"

Dean glared at him across the space between the beds as he settled down and pulled the blankets up.

"Okay, okay." Sam put his hands in the air and stood, turning around to dig through his bag. He needed to find something he could sleep in, because his usual pajamas were on his brother. "How's your head?"

"It's fine."

"Did you take any ...?"

"I'm good. Knock it off."

"I'm gonna hop in the shower real quick. I'm assuming you left me some hot water." He was trying his best to pretend that everything was normal, but he knew it fell flat. Everything was so not normal that it wasn't even close to funny. "You get some sleep."

"I'm tryin' to. It'd be easier if you'd shut up."

Sam nodded and pulled an extra pair of grey sweats out of the bottom of his bag. "I'll wake you up in two ..."

"Do it and die, Sam. I swear to God."

Sam let his arms fall to his sides and turned his head. Dean was lying on his right side, facing the window, with the blankets pulled all the way up to his shoulders. It was pretty clear that as far as Dean was concerned the conversation, and the whole day, was over.

Sam reached over and flipped off the light between the beds, then headed for the bathroom.

* * *

**1998**

It took Dean less than a second to realize just how screwed they were. He was defenseless, Sam was clueless, and they were alone. Even if he had known of a way to banish a spirit without weapons or the ability to move – and he was sure Dad or Bobby knew one, if there was such a thing – they'd still have been in trouble.

Dean had taken John's warnings seriously, and had done the most thorough job of salting the windows and doors that he'd ever done, but it hadn't been good enough. Something – and he didn't doubt for a second that it was the spirit that John and Bobby were there to kill – had still managed to get in. He couldn't believe that he'd been so careless, so stupid. What had he forgotten?

But he didn't have the time to worry about that; he needed to protect Sam. And to do that he needed more information than he had. What kind of spirit was it? What did it do? Why did John think it was a threat to Sam but not to Dean? He wished John had shared the intel that he and Bobby had gathered on the thing, but they'd taken it with them. There was only one way he might be able to figure out what he needed to know about the thing, so even though it was a long shot, he gave it a try.

"Who the hell are you?"

The spirit tilted its head and leered at Dean as it walked toward him. The expression it wore on its face made Dean's skin crawl, made him wish that he could go take a shower of his own. Just the way it was looking at him made him feel filthy. Without saying a word, the thing made it very clear just exactly what kind of a threat it was, and what it would want from Sam.

"You stay away from him," Dean growled. "You stay away from him or I swear to God ..."

"Coy," the thing said.

"What?" Dean had been expecting a monster's voice, rough and cracked and evil, but that wasn't what he heard. This voice sounded like any other average person, really, more like a mild-manned business man than a serial killer. But the evil was still there.

"You asked me my name," it said. "I'm Coy Holman."

Dean glared at it even as he pulled futilely against the invisible force that had him pinned.

"And you ..." The leer was back, and if it was possible, it was growing more disturbing the closer Holman got. "You are Dean Winchester. And in the shower?" Holman turned his head slightly so he could glance back down the hallway toward the bathroom door, and the bastard actually licked its lips. "That's little Sammy."

Dean was shaking now, both with hatred and the exertion of trying to free himself. No one wore that expression while they were talking about his brother and walked away from it. This son of a bitch was toast.

Just as soon as Dean got himself off the wall.

"Don't you fuckin' touch him!"

Holman turned back around and walked slowly across the room. When its face was only inches from Dean's, close enough for Dean to smell its rancid, rotting breath, it leaned forward. Dean's heart pounded in his chest, his breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps, as Holman leaned himself even further in. Dean shuddered when he felt the thing's lips brush against his ear.

"You know what I want, don't you, Dean?" it whispered. "Daddy didn't tell you, but you know what I want. And I always get what I want."

Sam chose the worst possible moment to step through the bathroom door. "Hey, Dean ... ?"

"No!" Dean cried out. "Sam, run!"

But Sam didn't run; Sam froze. He stood there at the end of the hallway, shirtless in a pair of brown sweatpants, still dripping from his shower and with steam still rising from his skin. His eyes widened, all of the color drained from his face, and he looked so much younger than his actual fourteen years that it made Dean's heart ache. Sam really was still just a kid, young and scared and somehow, even after all he'd seen, impossibly innocent.

_'Not like this,'_ Dean begged silently, though he had no idea who he thought was listening. _'Please don't let him lose that like this!'_

And then Sam was moving, running just like Dean had told him to. But he wasn't running away.

He was running toward his brother.

"Dean!"

Holman flicked his right hand with an air of boredom, and Sam stopped in his tracks. Before Sam's face had a chance to register anything more than confusion, he flew to his right and his back slammed into the far wall of the room.

"Hello, Sammy," Holman said. He walked away from Dean and toward Sam with that disgusting smile back on his face. "My name is Coy. Coy Holman. It is truly a pleasure to meet you. I have heard so much about you."

Sam turned toward Dean, his expression one of fear and confusion. Dean's struggles to free himself grew frantic.

"You let him go," Dean demanded. "He's just a fuckin' kid. You let him go!"

Holman turned his head, redirecting the lustful inspection away from Dean's half-naked little brother and back to him. "Yes, he is." Just the sound of this thing's voice was setting Dean's nerves on edge – oozing and slimy and dripping with every disgusting thing Dean could imagine. "Just a little boy. I like that."

Dean swore that he'd do anything to keep those eyes from turning back to Sam, to keep them from raking up and down Sam's body like they were currently doing to his. He just wasn't entirely sure how to do it. Under Holman's wanting gaze, Dean felt like a slab of raw meat, and if the way Holman was licking his lips was any indication, the spirit was hungry for some medium rare. But no way in hell was he looking at Sammy like that, even if Dean had to cut the fucker's eyes out.

"I get what I want, Dean," Holman repeated, loud enough for Sam to hear what he was saying. "Daddy's gone, and he's not coming back until morning. I've got all the time I need." Holman stepped close to Dean again, so close that its leg brushed against the outside of his thigh, and he turned his head to look at Sam.

Sam stared back at him, dark eyes filled with terror. Dean didn't know if Sam had fully caught or understood the implication and threat under Holman's words, though he hoped that he hadn't. But it was obvious that he had figured out enough to know that the situation was bad. And Holman was right about one thing – Dad was gone, and he wasn't going to be back in time.

"And how old are you, Dean? Daddy didn't say."

"Eight ... nineteen," Dean answered without taking his eyes off of Sam's.

"Oh, and it's your birthday, I heard. So, nineteen just today then?" Dean knew it was close to him, could sense it moving around next to him, but refused to look at it. "You don't look nineteen."

"Fuck you."

Holman clicked his tongue in admonishment as he walked around him. "Now, Dean, that's not very nice. Surely you don't want to be making me angry right now, do you?" It stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Sam, and lowered his voice again. "Or were you making me an offer?"

Dean felt the spirit's hand on his chest, its cold, dead fingers running up and down his ribs, and he shivered. Holman's touch, even through the fabric of his t-shirt, was like pure ice, leeching all the warmth from his skin and leaving freezing tracks in its wake. Holman circled him again.

He wanted to close his eyes and pretend it wasn't real, but he couldn't look away from Sam. He'd messed everything up. He hadn't been able to protect Sam at all. The least he could do was stay with him, stay focused on him, no matter what happened.

Holman pulled back, moved away until he stood between them. "Isn't it ironic, boys? Daddy and Uncle Bobby, making such a big fuss about protecting you from me, but they brought me right to you. And all their talk about salt and keeping me out? They had you lock me right in here with you. It's almost too perfect, isn't it? Almost like they knew."

Dean glared at Holman with every ounce of hatred he could muster. "They didn't know shit."

"No, you're right, they didn't." Holman's voice was light, teasing. "Well, they did know that I left one laying in the woods behind this motel, but they didn't know that I could come here because of him. They didn't know that I was listening to them in my house, when they were talking about pretty little Sammy back at the motel, and how much I'd like him. They didn't know that I was already here when they left. And they had no idea the lengths I'm willing to go to get what I want."

"Dean?"

Sam's voice was small, frightened and confused. He seemed as vulnerable as he was, the perfect prey. Holman took two steps toward him, with that damned perverted smile on his face, and Dean had never wanted to wrap his hands around something's neck so badly in his life.

"I will fucking kill you." All of the hatred that Dean had ever felt toward every single evil thing he'd ever seen dripped from the words.

Holman moved himself from one side of the room to the other so fast that Dean had to stifle the urge to gasp in surprise. Then his lips were against Dean's ear again, words whispered so softly that Dean knew there was no way Sam could hear them. For that, he would be forever thankful.

"You're feisty, Dean. Pretty. A bit old for my taste, yes, but I have to admit, you've got me intrigued." Venom, evil and unholy lust dripped from every word. "I came here for Sammy, that's true. But I might be persuaded to change my mind."

He knew how to keep it away from Sam.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

**2006**

The phone was ringing when Sam came out of the bathroom, and he rushed forward to grab it. He didn't know how long it had been ringing, but it hadn't woken Dean up yet, so it couldn't have been very long. He had no idea who would be calling them at three in the morning, and he didn't dare to let himself hope it was John, but it had to be important. He flipped it open without looking at the caller ID and pressed it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Sam? That you?"

Sam pulled the phone away and stared down at the display. He recognized the voice on the other end, and that's whose name was on the screen, but it didn't make any sense.

"Sam?"

"Bobby?"

"Yeah." He could almost hear the smile on Bobby's face. "How ya doin', kid? How's that brother of ...?"

"What's going on? Why are you calling me?"

"What?" Now he sounded offended. "An old friend can't call just to catch up?"

"At three in the morning? No, not really." Silence fell on both ends of the line. "Bobby?"

"I just heard that maybe you boys had run into some trouble, and I was wantin' to make sure you were okay. That's all."

Sam wasn't really a naturally suspicious person – that had always been Dean – and Bobby was one of the few people in the world that he trusted completely, but that set off alarms in his head. "What kind of trouble?"

He heard Bobby draw a ragged breath. "Well, that thing in Nebraska last week, for starters. And you ever keep something like that from me again, I'll put my boot so far up your ass ... Damn it, Sam, your brother is dyin', you call me!"

Sam ran his hand through his hair nervously and sat down in the desk chair. "Yeah, about that ... Bobby, I just ... I mean, I don't ..." He took a deep breath and blew it out. "I'm sorry. I should have called."

"Damn right you shoulda called! Shoulda been the first person you called, right after your daddy."

Sam blinked in confusion. "How'd you know I called my dad?"

The answer was silence, but only for a second. "Well, ya did, didn't ya?" Sam nodded his head but didn't speak. "Doesn't matter anyway. Next time it happens, to either of you, you call me. Got it?"

"Yeah, Bobby," Sam said softly. "Yeah, I got it."

"All right. Now ..." Another pause, but this one was heavier. Sam knew something big was coming. "I hear you boys are down in Johnston."

Sam jumped to attention in the chair. "Heard how?"

"With my ears. Hunters talk, Sam, it's no big deal. I just wanna know what the hell you two think you're doin' there."

"It's a hunt," Sam said. "It seemed like a simple thing, in and out. We've been here less than a day."

"And?"

Sam drew another deep breath and rubbed at his forehead with his hand. "And ... I don't think we should be here at all. We're not handling it well, and there's too many coincidences. It seems like everywhere we go, we end up getting pulled back into the Coy Holman hunt, somehow. Like this whole damn job was just to bring us here and fuck with our heads."

"What's goin' on, Sam?"

"I don't know. I mean, one minute we're fine and the next ... I'm flipping out or forgetting really basic stuff, or Dean's having a panic attack or passing out, or ..."

"Dean passed out?"

"Yeah," Sam answered absently. "In Holman's basement."

"You were in Coy Holman's basement!" Sam jerked his head away from the phone at Bobby's bellow. "Boy, where the hell was your head?"

"It was an accident! We didn't know where we were. Or at least, I didn't know where we were. Dean said he'd been there before. We found one of the victims' bodies down there ..."

Bobby interrupted him with a loud sigh. "Let me talk to Dean."

"He's sleeping."

"Well then wake him up! I need to talk to him."

"All right. Hang on." Sam pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the beds, tapping Dean on the leg when he reached him. "Dean, wake up. Bobby's on the phone. Wants to talk to you."

Sam waited a few seconds for the expected response, which should have been Dean rolling to his back, grumbling, and reaching for the phone. Dean didn't move, which Sam chalked up to him being more tired than Sam had thought he was, so he tried again.

"Hey, Dean." He shook Dean's leg and raised his voice. "Wake up already."

Again, there was no response.

"Come on, man," Sam said tiredly. "Bobby's waiting for you."

He meant to shake Dean's shoulder lightly, nothing more. But when he grabbed his arm, there was no resistance at all, and Dean flopped from his side onto his back. His arms were limp, his eyes were closed, and he was pale as a sheet. His lips were parted slightly, and his eyes had dark circles around them.

_"What can I say, man, it's a dangerous gig."_

"No!" Sam cried out. His heart jumped into his throat, and he found it suddenly impossible to breathe. He bent his leg and put his knee on the bed, grabbed both of Dean's shoulders and shook him. The phone fell from his hand, ignored in his haste to get to Dean, and landed on the floor next to his foot, but Sam didn't notice. "Wake up! Dean! Wake the fuck up!"

He could hear someone calling his name over and over again, but it wasn't Dean, so he ignored it. He put his hands on either side of Dean's face and turned his head back and forth, looking for blood from a head wound that he knew hadn't been that bad, but there was nothing. "No, no, no," he muttered. "No, this isn't happening. Come on, Dean. Wake up. Please!"

"Sam! Damn it, boy, answer me! Sam!"

Sam jumped when he finally recognized Bobby's voice for what it was, and he scrambled to pick the forgotten phone up from the floor. "Bobby! Bobby, he won't ... I can't ..."

"Just calm down, Sam."

"I can't calm down! Bobby, he looks like ... oh, God, he's so pale, and he's barely breathing, and he won't wake up!"

"Is this what he did in that basement?"

Bobby's question didn't strike him as important, not up against his brother unconscious on the bed. "Dean, you gotta wake up!"

"Sam! Is this what happened at Holman's place?"

"What?" Sam shook his head as he fought to get control of his thoughts. "Yes. Yeah, this is what he did there."

"And what fixed it?"

"I don't know," Sam answered. "I was carrying him, and he just all of a sudden woke up."

"You carried him away from the house?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Sam, you listen to me, and you listen good. You put your brother in the car, and you run. Get him the hell outta there. Do it now."

"What? Why?"

"Because if he's doin' the same thing, then I'm thinkin' there's a damn good chance that whatever's makin' him do it is local. Get him far enough away from it, and ..."

"Okay, okay. Hang on." Sam grabbed his jacket off his bed and put it on over his t-shirt, slipped his bare feet into his shoes, and put the phone into his coat pocket without closing it. Then he grabbed Dean's shoulders and pulled him up, putting a hand behind his head when it fell back. Sam pressed Dean's forehead against his shoulder, wrapped his other arm around Dean's waist, and pulled him to the edge of the bed. Half a second later, he had his brother draped across his shoulder again and was on the way out the door.

It took him less than a minute to get the car door open and Dean laid down awkwardly across the back seat. He made sure Dean's legs were out of the way and then slammed the door. Only then did he think to pat his pockets down for the keys. He remembered throwing them down on the desk when they'd gotten back, so he ran back into the room to grab them. He picked up one duffel bag, his laptop bag, and Dean's shotgun on the way out, just in case, locked the door behind him, and jumped behind the wheel.

He supposed that someone somewhere was going to be bothered by the tires squealing in the parking lot at that hour, but he really didn't care.

It wasn't until he was on the interstate, leaving Johnston behind them at eighty miles an hour, that he pulled the phone out of his pocket.

"Is this gonna work, Bobby?" Sam risked a worried glance at Dean in the rearview mirror.

"I have no idea. But it's better than staying there and doin' nothing, isn't it?"

"Bobby ..."

There were so many things unsaid in that one name, years of pain, hope, and loss mixed with two weeks of constant fear, all swirling together in Sam's mind, and it was circling Dean.

"Where are you?"

Sam nodded his head, appreciating the distraction. "On I80, headed west."

"Okay. Get off on one-forty-one. Stay on it, and head for Coon Rapids. The Elms Motel. You should be there in about an hour, and I'll be there in a little under two."

Those times didn't make sense to Sam, and for the first time he noticed that the sounds coming through the phone behind Bobby's voice weren't the ones he'd expect from the house.

"Bobby, are you ...?"

"Been on the road for an hour already, Sam. I was comin' to you, whether you wanted me or not."

Sam smiled in spite of the situation and blinked away the moisture that suddenly filled his eyes. "Thank you, Bobby."

"Don't thank me yet," Bobby answered. "If this works, and we get him woke up, then you can thank me."

"And until then?"

"Just keep drivin', Sam. Call me if ya need anything. Otherwise, I'll see ya in a few."

* * *

Dean blinked, trying to clear away the remnants of the bright white flash, and then looked around.

He was standing at the end of a driveway he knew he'd been in before, in a neighborhood that he knew was familiar, but he couldn't place where he was. A row of shrubs to his left moved with the breeze, and at the end of the driveway stood a modest but well maintained two-story white house with a large front porch and red shutters. The closest houses he could see looked to be in the same condition, but they were all quiet. Everything was quiet; he couldn't even hear any birds.

As Dean looked around, he came to two conclusions very quickly. First, he wasn't where he had been only seconds before and second, he'd managed to lose track of Sam. The first problem he'd figure out later. The second he had to fix immediately.

"Sam!" he called out as he started up the driveway. "Sammy!"

He didn't understand where Sam could have gone so fast. He was just a kid, after all, if a freakishly tall one for fourteen. He knew he'd just been standing right beside him, just a few feet away, even though he couldn't remember any more detail than that. He picked up his pace as he moved forward, checking every inch of the yard. As he rounded the back corner of the house, he saw the bulkhead door standing wide open, so he walked toward it.

"Sam?" he called down the stairs and into the darkness. He could see the interior basement door standing open, too, so went down to it and leaned in. "Sam, you down here?"

He'd only taken a few steps into the basement when something heavy slammed into his back, driving him face-first into the wall and knocking the air out of his lungs.

"I knew you'd come back, Dean."

And suddenly, everything that had been muddied and confused in Dean's mind snapped into focus. He was in Coy Holman's basement, and that was Coy Holman's voice whispering in his ear.

"No," he said through clenched teeth. "This isn't real. You're dead!"

"Am I? Are you so sure of that?" The man at his back grabbed his left wrist, twisted it up behind him, and leaned against him harder. "Don't I feel real to you?"

"He killed you. You're dead," Dean insisted.

"He tried to kill me." He yanked on Dean's wrist again, this time making him yelp in pain. "And you let him. You're both going to pay for that, you know. I told you to be nice, didn't I? But you had to make me angry."

Dean was struggling with every ounce of strength he had, but it did him no good. His efforts earned him nothing but an elbow in his back, pinning his chest so tightly to the wall that he couldn't breathe, and a hand in his hair that yanked his head back.

"You're leaving now, Dean, but don't you worry. You'll be back."

Dean's head was pulled back further before it was shoved into the concrete wall. He immediately felt the blood running down his forehead and the ache in his chest that made it so hard to breathe, but he managed to spin and face Holman.

"Tell little Sammy that I said hello."

* * *

Dean woke up about thirty miles from Johnston, and it was neither a peaceful nor an easy waking. He bolted up from the seat so fast that he almost smashed his own head into the window, gasping for breath, swinging his right hand blindly in front of him, and with his left hand pressed against his chest.

"Sam!"

Sam pulled the car off to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes so hard that it was still sliding when he threw it into park. He spun around in his seat to face his brother, but his relief at seeing Dean awake was almost immediately overridden by Dean's obvious distress. "Hey! Dean, calm down. You're awake. It's okay."

"He's here!"

"No, Dean, he's ..."

But Dean didn't wait around to hear what else Sam said. He yanked the handle hard, threw open the door, and bolted out of the car.

"Shit." Sam turned off the ignition and climbed out after him.

"Dean?" Sam rounded the hood of the Impala and saw that Dean hadn't gone far after he'd left the car. It looked like he'd only managed to stumble a few steps away before he'd fallen to his knees, and he was hunched over in the ditch, heaving and retching, coughing and gagging when nothing but watery bile came up. That was when Sam realized that he hadn't seen Dean eat anything since they'd gotten to Johnston, and he could have kicked himself for not noticing sooner.

Then Dean was done, and his head dropped to his chest like he didn't have the energy to hold it up anymore. He was wobbling back and forth on his knees, and Sam jumped forward to stop him from falling face-first in his own mess.

"Easy, Dean," he said softly as he reached for his brother's arm. "Take it easy."

Dean came alive when he noticed someone moving toward him, and he pushed himself back with his knees, landing on his ass in the mud again. He crab-crawled backward with one hand, holding the other in front of himself in self-defense. He didn't stop moving until he'd backed himself up against the Impala and had nowhere else to go. He spent a few seconds scuffing the rocks hard enough to make Sam worry that he was going to slice his bare feet open.

And then he just stopped. Dean's head fell forward again, and when he lifted his hands to press them against his temples, Sam saw just how much he was shaking.

Sam went down to one knee at Dean's side and reached a tentative hand toward his shoulder, but Dean saw him coming and brushed him off.

"Don't, Sam! Just ... give me a minute."

Sam settled himself on the ground in front of Dean, close enough to be there if he needed him, but far enough away that he couldn't be accused of crowding him, crossed his legs in front of himself and leaned back on his hands. Dean closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the door of the Impala. The deep breaths he was taking seemed to be helping calm him down, because he wasn't shaking as badly.

Several moments passed in silence before Dean spoke again.

"He's not dead."

Sam was shaking his head before Dean had finished his statement. "That's not possible. No way. There's just no way."

"Well there's gotta be some way, because he's not."

"No, I'm telling you, Dean, it's impossible. It was a whole canister of salt, half a bottle of lighter fluid and a whole box of matches. It was a fuckin' bonfire. No way he survived that."

Dean opened his eyes and turned his head slightly so he could look directly at more Sam.

"And how do you know all that for sure?"

Sam ducked his head and stared at the ground. Coy Holman hadn't exactly been a popular topic of conversation over the years, because none of them particularly wanted to talk about him, and Sam was fairly sure that Dean wouldn't want to hear what he had to say about it anyway, so he'd never actually told Dean how he knew that Holman was dead. The few times it had come up, Dean had always seemed to just accept what he said as fact, without needing to know details. Sam shrugged and raised his head, staring straight ahead into the darkness.

"Because I was there."

"You were where?" Dean asked, and even though Sam couldn't see the expression on his face, he knew what it was. Dean was pissed. "At Holman's grave? He took you on a fucking job?"

And getting madder.

"It wasn't just any job, Dean, it was ..."

"It was dangerous is what it was! And stupid. And reckless, and ... You were fourteen years old! What if Holman had ...?"

Sam looked up when he heard Dean's head hit the car door.

"Hey," he said softly. "I was fine."

"No, you were fourteen. No way in hell did you ... Damn it!" Dean looked directly at him again. "No fourteen year old kid needs to be watching his father dig up and burn a human body. I don't care whose it is."

Sam bit his lip as he nodded his head. Dean's reaction wasn't exactly unexpected, and that was a large part of why Sam had never told him he'd gone with John to salt and burn Coy Holman's remains. But now that he'd actually seen Dean react to just knowing he'd been there, there was no way that Sam would ever tell him who'd actually lit the fire.

_"You don't have to do this, Sam. I think I'd feel better if you didn't."_

"It doesn't matter anyway," Dean said. "Because whatever Dad did to him, it didn't work. I'm tellin' ya, Sammy, it's him. I talked to the son of a bitch."

Sam scratched his head absently as he tried to ignore the growing sense of dread that was coming over him. "Okay, well, if that's possible, Bobby'll know how he did it, right? How he could have survived? Bobby always knows things like that."

"Bobby?"

"Um, yeah," Sam answered with an awkward smile. "We're actually meeting up with him."

"Bobby as in Uncle Bobby? Robert Singer?"

"Yes, Bobby Singer. You know some other Bobby that could help us with an angry serial killing spirit problem?" Sam could feel the tension radiating off of Dean, even though he didn't understand exactly what was causing it. Yes, their last encounter with Bobby hadn't ended well, but Sam had always known that Bobby's anger was directed solely at John. Bobby loved both Sam and Dean, no matter what. Dean had to know that.

"Maybe you don't want to admit it yet, Dean, but we need help. Especially if what you just said about Coy Holman is true."

"So you called Bobby?"

"No!" Sam answered quickly. "Bobby called me."

Dean's immediate answer to that was silence. Dean had always been the suspicious one, and Sam knew that he was having the same thoughts, questions and doubts about that phone call that Sam himself had when he'd heard Bobby's voice on the other end of the line.

"Why?"

"He said he heard we were down here. And ...," Sam continued on, not wanting to give Dean a chance to ask how. "He's pissed about the Nebraska thing."

"How pissed?"

"I'm thinking he'll hug you, smack me, and then smack you."

He heard Dean sigh. "Guess we've got that comin', huh?"

"Oh, yeah. Apparently it's a rule. If one of us is dying, we're supposed to call Bobby."

A few more seconds of silence passed. "Where are we supposed to hook up with him?"

"The Elms Motel in Coon Rapids. He won't be there for an hour after we are, though, so we've got time. If you just wanna ..."

"Wanna what?" Dean interrupted. "Sit in a ditch on the side of the road at ... what time is it, even?"

Sam hit the light on the side of his watch. "Almost four."

"Damn." Dean brushed his hands off on his pants, and started pushing himself to his feet. "We should get going." Sam was on his feet first, and he reached back down to help Dean up from the ground.

"Sam ..."

There was a warning in Dean's voice, and Sam recognized it for what it was. He stopped himself from grabbing Dean's arms like he'd planned, pulled back slightly, and offered his hand instead.

Dean looked up at it for a few seconds before grasping Sam's forearm tightly; Sam wrapped his hand around Dean's arm in response and pulled him to his feet. They walked the few steps to the front passenger door and when Sam kept going, heading for the driver's side, Dean sighed and pulled it open. He crossed his arms and leaned against the roof to watch Sam walk around the front of the car.

Sam pulled his door open, but stopped when he noticed Dean standing there. "What?"

"How do you kill a spirit that doesn't have a body?"

Sam took a long breath and blew it out. "I don't know." He was still shaking his head when he sat down in the seat and pulled the door shut behind him.

Dean looked around at the darkness for a few seconds before getting in. The engine roared to life and the Impala pulled away from the side of the road, heading back out onto the highway.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

**2006**

Sam checked them into the Elms Motel, because Dean wasn't feeling up to dealing with anyone other than Sam. And it was becoming fairly clear that he wasn't all that fond of dealing with Sam either, at least not right then.

They walked into their room in silence and took their usual beds. Dean threw the duffel bag on his, dug out fresh clothes, and headed straight for the shower. He slammed the door without a word, leaving Sam standing alone in the middle of the room. Sam simply shook his head and sighed as he tossed the laptop down on his bed.

_"Nothing happened!"_

That's what Dean had said about their last trip to Johnston, what he insisted on saying every time the subject came up.

_"Nothing happened!"_

"Must have been one hell of a nothing," Sam said to the empty room.

He knew that he wasn't going to get an answer of any substance out of his brother, so Sam picked up his laptop, took it to the desk, and plugged it in. If Dean wouldn't tell him, then he'd damn well figure it out himself. It was long-since past time for him to start digging up information on Coy Holman.

John had never shared his research on the spirit with either of the boys or, to their knowledge, with anyone at all other than Bobby. After the hunt, he'd taken all of his notes and burned them in a trashcan on the side of the road while Dean and Sam watched from the car. The hunt had not been easy on any of them, and they all needed a clean break and a clear signal of closure to start moving past it.

John had decided that burning his research would be that signal. Whether or not any of them had gotten any kind of closure from that was up for debate, but it sure as hell made the current hunt a lot harder than it should have been.

An hour later, Sam had learned enough to decide that just killing the bastard hadn't been enough. And he was starting to think he was glad to be getting another chance at it, so he could do it as slowly and painfully as he deserved.

Coy Holman was suspected of having killed six fourteen and fifteen year old boys between the years of 1975 and 1990, but he hadn't been satisfied with just murdering them. When he finally went to prison in 1991, it was after being convicted of five counts each of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder – one count for each of the bodies the authorities had recovered. The sixth boy, the first one to go missing, had never been located by the police.

John and Bobby had figured out where his body was, though. He was the reason that Sam and Dean knew how dangerous having a victim unaccounted for for any amount of time could be. Holman's spirit had been tied not only to his own remains, but the body of his first victim, as well. The unfortunate boy had been Holman's "dirty little secret," and, as Sam had learned much later, some spirits could and would revisit the bodies of their victims from time to time. The body had been left close enough to the motel that it allowed Holman to manifest in their room. Finding his remains and taking care of them was the "recon" that John and Bobby had been doing in the woods that night. He had been put to rest, but it had been too late to prevent Holman's spirit from taking another victim.

The worst part, and the part that had made Sam have to turn away from the desk more than once, was that he knew not only how each of the five boys the police found had been killed, but also exactly what had happened to them before they'd been allowed to die. Coy Holman had been a sexual sadist with a taste for young boys, and he'd tortured each and every one of them for hours before finally strangling them to death.

He also knew what had been in the basement, what the police had found there when they'd shown up to arrest him for the death of the fifth missing boy. They'd found Holman in the same room where he and Dean had found Zack Mason, with what was left of his last victim, surrounded by the tools of his trade: the ropes, knives and torture implements that Holman had called his "toys."

Holman had been beaten to death by the other inmates in December of 1996, only five years into the first of his five consecutive life sentences. The first of the next grouping of victims had gone missing on December 13, 1997. Those boys had disappeared at the rate of one a week, always on a Saturday, until the night John and Bobby had come to Johnston to hunt Holman down.

January 24, 1998.

Dean's nineteenth birthday.

Sam knew that evil didn't change much from one side of the veil to the other. Evil spirits did the same things in much the same ways that their human selves had done. The only real difference was that spirits didn't have to touch a person to inflict damage, because they could climb inside their victims' heads. So the fact that only the human's victims bore the marks of their torture didn't mean that the spirit's victims hadn't endured the same.

Sam glanced up at Dean over the top of the computer, but he looked back down almost immediately.

He was trying really hard to keep himself from going there, but he couldn't. The more he learned, the more distressed he got, the more nauseous he felt, and the harder his heart pounded. He tried to push it away, but it was always there and no matter how hard he fought, he couldn't make the thoughts leave him alone.

Somehow – and Sam still didn't completely understand it – Dean had been in that basement before.

That fact alone would have been enough to turn the pit of Sam's stomach into a black hole. But it was the faces that stared back at him from the screen of the laptop – the faces of all six of Holman's human-form victims alongside all six of his original spirit-form victims – that were bothering Sam the most. Because when he looked at those faces, he couldn't deny the obvious conclusion that was looking back at him.

Dean should never have caught Holman's eye.

All twelve of them had either dark hazel or brown eyes, and long brown hair. All of them were fourteen or fifteen years old, never any older than that. All of them had been tall for their age. None of them had survived.

Until Dean, and Dean had changed everything.

Sam risked another quick look at Dean, who was sitting with his back against the headboard of his bed, watching television. The bag Sam had grabbed in Johnston had been his, so Dean was wearing his clothes again. Dressed in a too-big shirt and a pair of too-long jeans that he'd rolled up, with his bare feet sticking out, his face pale and his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions, Dean didn't look much like a twenty-seven year old man.

He looked like a kid. And he looked so much like the kids from Johnston that Sam had to look away.

The faces of Holman's other victims were still there on his computer screen, staring at him, accusing him of failure. Accusing him of being the source of his brother's pain. Accusing him of being at fault for all of it.

Because those twelve boys did look exactly like one of John Winchester's sons, but it wasn't Dean.

This time, when Sam looked up, Dean was staring right at him.

"What?"

"I don't get it, Dean."

"Don't get what?" Dean asked with some heat. "He was a piece of shit human when he was alive, he died, he turned into a piece of shit spirit. Not that hard to 'get'."

Sam shook his head and looked back down at the laptop. "No, that part I get ... or don't ... whatever. But that's not what I meant."

Dean picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels. "So what then?"

"Well, I know Dad researched him the last time, but he didn't leave any notes in the journal ..."

"He burned 'em all. Thought the son of a bitch was dead."

Sam closed his eyes and nodded his head. "I know, I remember that. There was no reason to keep anything about a spirit he thought was gone. But that means that I'm researching him again ..."

"Yeah, I figured that out already. I didn't think you'd just suddenly had an urge to start talking about him." Dean's voice was light and mocking, but then he sighed. "So shoot. You've hit the jackpot on this one, Sammy. You've got a witness right here."

Sam looked up from the laptop and studied his brother from across the room. He didn't like the tone of voice that Dean was using at all; it was too matter-of-fact for Sam's liking. Part of him hoped that Dean was far-enough removed from what had happened all those years ago that it just didn't bother him anymore, but his behavior over the past two days said that wasn't really possible. Sam remembered the look in Dean's eyes when he'd woken up in the field, and again in the back of the Impala, and it had been fear, pure and simple.

But because Dean was Dean, he was going to pretend it didn't bother him. And because Sam was Sam, he was going to let him get away with it. He hated that aspect of their relationship almost as much as he had come to expect it.

But not mentioning Dean's fear didn't mean that he was going to pretend that he wasn't aware of it.

"I'm not interviewing you," was all he said.

"Why not?" Dean asked. "I'm right here, not going anywhere. Only survivor he ever left behind." Dean's voice had an edge to it that hadn't been there before, but if Sam hadn't known him as well as he did, he'd have missed it.

Sam turned his attention to the keys on his keyboard, unwilling to look at the faces on the computer screen, unwilling to look at Dean when he answered him. "One, because it's been more than eight years. How do you know you remember everything?"

Dean snorted humorlessly. "Not exactly something you forget, Sam. And even if I am missing a piece or two, it's better than nothing, which is what you've got without me."

"Two, you're not a witness, you're a ..."

"You're not finishing that sentence, are you?"

Sam caught the implied threat in Dean's question and sighed. "And three, you don't fit."

Dean crossed his ankles and arms and raised his eyebrows slightly. "I don't what?"

"Fit," Sam repeated. "You don't fit."

Dean wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "What does that mean?"

Sam gestured at the laptop, then started rubbing his hands up and down his legs nervously. He knew there was no other conclusion that could be reached with the information he had, and he knew that if there was any other relevant information, Dean was the one who had it. He prayed that he was wrong, was terrified that he was right, and had no choice but to dive in and ask.

"People ..." Sam huffed out a breath; he was using that word loosely. "People like Holman, they have ... preferences. Things that they look for in a victim, like hair color or eye color or age."

"What did I say about that word?" Dean asked. Sam wondered if he was intentionally ignoring the rest of what had been said or if the word 'victim' really did bother him that much. Knowing Dean, it was probably a little bit of both.

"He always went for the same type. Every time. Alive and dead, his preferences stayed the same." Sam pressed his hands against the table and stood. "They're all alike. Fourteen and fifteen year old boys, with long dark hair and dark eyes. All of them, Dean. Until you."

Dean didn't answer, and Sam turned toward him. Dean's eyes were cast down, and he seemed to be studying the blanket he was sitting on.

"Why?" Sam asked. He hoped that Dean didn't know the answer to that question, but he was almost positive that he did. "Why did he go after you?"

Dean let out an exaggerated huff. "How the hell should I know?" he asked. "Guy was fucking nuts, Sam. So he went off script. So what?"

"No," Sam said slowly, motioning at the laptop as he slowly walked toward the bed. "People like him don't just go off script, Dean. They don't. He was what they call a preferential offender. He had a type, and you weren't it."

"What can I say?" Dean asked with a shrug and a fake smile that Sam was sure were supposed to be nonchalant and charming but that came off instead as defensive. "Just too pretty for my own good, I guess."

Sam squared his shoulders and stood straighter. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

"No, it's really not," Sam returned.

Dean sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, running his hand through his hair as his feet hit the floor. "What do you want me to say, Sam?" he asked tiredly.

Memories flooded Sam's mind: the sound of Coy Holman's voice, the things he'd said, the way he'd looked at him, the way he'd smiled. All of those things that Sam hadn't fully understood at the time but that now, looking back, he couldn't deny. He remembered the way Dean had looked at him, had reassured him without words, had made him feel safe.

Until Dean had turned away, said something to Holman that Sam couldn't hear, and everything had changed. He'd never looked back at Sam after that, no matter how much Sam had begged. And neither had Holman.

"Tell me what you did."

Dean jumped as though he'd been bitten, and Sam watched a dozen different emotions flash in his eyes. "I didn't do anything," he said. His protest was weak, though, and he avoided Sam's eyes by staring at the floor. "Didn't have a choice."

"Not what I mean," Sam said as he stepped forward again. "Tell me why he went against type. Tell me why every single one of his other victims – and that is what they were, and is what you were, and don't you dare yell at me for saying it – had long hair and dark eyes, but you didn't. Tell me why every single one of them was under the age of sixteen, but you were nineteen."

"Looked young for my age," Dean said without raising his head.

"There's more to it than that," Sam said. "And you know what it was, don't you?"

Dean pushed himself to his feet and stepped toward the door, either not noticing or not caring that he had no shoes on. "Fuck this. I'm not having this conversation."

"Yes, you are!"

Sam stepped between Dean and the door and raised his open hands in front of him. He didn't want Dean to feel like a prisoner, but there was no way Sam was letting him walk out of that room.

"He was there because of me. He said that more than once. So why didn't he hurt me, Dean? Why did he go after you?" Sam demanded.

"I don't know." Dean's hands were curled into fists at his sides and his teeth were clenched. He tried to walk around Sam, to get outside and away from a question that it was becoming blatantly obvious he didn't want to answer. Sam stepped in front of him, cutting him off again, and Dean took a step back. "Stop it, Sam."

"Talk to me, Dean. Tell me why he did that."

"I don't know!"

Sam anticipated Dean's next escape attempt and blocked him before he'd even stepped to the side.

"Yes, you do," Sam insisted. He could see the veneer of control that Dean had been maintaining starting to fall away, and he knew he was pushing harder than he probably should be, but he couldn't let it go. "Tell me why none of the original twelve victims looked like you. Tell me why, until he went after you, they all looked like me!"

Dean froze in place, though his gaze darted around the room frantically. He looked at the floor, the wall, his own bare feet, the door – everywhere except at Sam.

For Sam, this had stopped being about information that they might need for the hunt they were facing and had become about Dean, about what had happened to him eight and a half years earlier and about exactly what part Sam had, even unknowingly, played in that.

"What did you do, Dean?" Sam could feel the moisture starting to well in his eyes, and he lowered his voice. "What did you do for me?"

"Nothing," Dean said, shaking his head vigorously as he made one more attempt to get past Sam and out the door. "I didn't do anything, because nothing happened!"

Sam grabbed for Dean's arm as he went past and managed to catch his sleeve. "Something happened, and we both know it. Now talk to me."

"Fucking drop it, Sam! I mean it." Dean jerked his arm free and took another step toward the door. "You don't know anything."

Sam reacted on instinct, because he knew that if he let Dean walk out of the room, he'd never get to the truth. He grabbed Dean's shoulders, spun him around and slammed his back into the wall, then pinned him in place with an arm across his chest. Sam could see the sudden flash of terror in Dean's eyes and knew that he was on the verge of another panic attack, but he didn't back off. It was a crappy way to get Dean to talk to him, but if it worked, that was all that mattered. He could deal with the fallout from it later.

"Why did he go after you?" Sam demanded once more.

"Get off me!"

Dean got his left arm between them, pressed his hand against Sam's chest, and shoved, but Sam didn't move. Instead, he knocked Dean's arm away, grabbed his wrist, and pinned it against the wall, too.

"Why?" he demanded.

"Fuck you!"

"Damn it, Dean, tell me why!" He leaned into his forearm and shoved Dean more tightly against the wall.

"Because I told him to!"

Sam didn't know which of them was more surprised by Dean's answer, the one who thought he'd never hear it or the one who thought he'd never say it. He felt a sudden numbness in his arms and legs, and he pushed himself away from the wall, shaking his head in denial and stepping back as he turned away. He'd known it from the moment he'd seen Holman's original victims, but hearing Dean say it made it more real than he'd expected it to. He felt as though he'd been punched in the gut.

"I couldn't ..." Dean's voice was weak, broken.

Sam looked back at him over his shoulder. What little color had been left in Dean's face was gone, and he was shaking again.

"I couldn't let him do that, Sammy. Not to you."

"So you volunteered to let him do it to you instead?" There was no accusation in Sam's voice, only pain and disbelief. "Why? Why would you do that?"

"What else could I do?"

Sam didn't know what bothered him more – the defeated way Dean asked the question or the fact that he'd asked it at all.

* * *

**1998**

When Dean saw the unspoken questions filling Sam's eyes – _What's going on? What's he saying to you? What are you planning to do? – _he forced himself to turn away. He leaned his head back against the wall and drew as deep a breath as the pressure pinning him to the wall and squeezing his chest would allow. Every self-preservation instinct he had was screaming at him not to do this, that he was crazy for considering it, that it wouldn't do any good. If he'd had to look at Sam while he was doing it, he'd never be able to go through with it.

Not that it really mattered. Because if what Dean was absolutely sure was about to happen actually did, and it happened while Sam was watching, Sam would never look at him again, anyway.

Dean turned his head toward Holman. "Tell me what you want," he whispered. There was no way he wanted Sam overhearing this conversation. "I'll give it to you."

"You will?"

Dean didn't speak his answer, but closed his eyes and nodded.

The pain that erupted in his chest, right under Holman's fingers, was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It ripped through his muscles like fire but flowed down his veins like ice water. Then came the stabbing pain, the one that made if feel like every inch of his skin was being flayed off one layer at a time. Dean's eyes snapped open in shock, and the cry had passed his lips before he could stop it.

"Dean!" he heard Sam call out from across the room. "Leave him alone, you son of a bitch!"

Holman ignored Sam's outburst and leaned into Dean's face once more.

"I want you to keep your eyes open, Dean. I want you to look at me. I want you to see me."

Dean nodded his head quickly, his breath coming in panting gasps as he wondered if the pain in his chest was ever going to stop. His lungs felt like they were on the verge of seizing up completely, he could barely breathe, and even if he could have found his voice nothing he said would have made any sense.

He was still avoiding looking at Sam, even though he could hear him across the room, begging him to do just that.

"Look at me, Dean! I'm right here. Look at me!"

Holman pulled his hand away, and suddenly Dean could breathe again. He would have slumped forward in relief if he could have, but as it was, he could only drop his head a few inches. Then Holman wrapped his hands around Dean's wrists and pushed his arms slowly up the wall, until they were pinned above his head. And suddenly, having the ability to breathe wasn't doing Dean much good, because he'd forgotten how to do it.

Fear coursed through his body with every beat of his rapidly pounding heart. Revulsion and shame battled for control of his emotions. Anger and hatred pulsed through his limbs, and protectiveness steeled his resolve.

But when Holman's lips approached his, Dean couldn't stop himself from closing his eyes and turning away.

The same pain that had erupted in his chest earlier flared to life in his wrists as Holman pressed them tighter against the wall and strengthened his grip, the pressure on them great enough that Dean could feel the bones grinding together. Then those same hands were wrapping around his neck, fingers squeezing his throat, the burning ice of the spirit's touch almost enough to mask the feeling of being strangled.

This was his last warning, and he knew that. He couldn't mess it up again.

"You give it to me," Holman whispered, "Or I take it from him."

Dean ignored everything else he was feeling; nothing else mattered. He had to keep this thing away from Sam. He'd worry about everything else later.

He opened his eyes, turned his face forward again, and forced himself to look directly into Coy Holman's cold, dark, dead eyes.

"Good boy."

Dean felt frozen, lifeless lips press against his, and he lost the ability to concentrate on anything else. The coldness spread quickly until it engulfed his whole body, paralyzing him, dragging everything out of his mind and to a faraway place where Dean couldn't find it. The only thought that remained was that Sam needed him to do this.

He thought he heard Sam screaming his name from that same dark, distant place, but he couldn't focus on it long enough to understand what he said, and then it was silenced by the muffled slam of a door. It was the last thing he heard before the coldness in his veins made its way into his mind and started pulling the rest of him into the same dark place his thoughts had gone.

He opened his mouth to release a scream that he'd never hear, caused by pain like he'd never felt before.

His body went limp in Coy Holman's grasp, and Dean Winchester disappeared.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

**2006**

Bobby was starting to wonder if Sam had given him the wrong room number. He'd been standing outside the door for a good two or three minutes, and he'd been knocking the entire time, but no one had answered him. He was lifting his fist to start really pounding when Sam opened the door and motioned him inside.

He picked up on the strained atmosphere in the room immediately, and he glanced back and forth between Sam and Dean as he walked in. "I interrupting something?"

"No," Sam said. He sat heavily in the chair at the desk and stared at the screen of the laptop in front of him. "We were just having a little talk about Coy Holman is all."

Bobby looked at Dean and noticed immediately that he was going out of his way to avoid looking at either him or Sam. Oh yeah, something was going on, all right.

"Must have been a hell of a talk," he remarked as he dropped his bag on the floor next to the air conditioner.

"I've been doing some research on Holman," Sam said. He gestured at the laptop. "Information on his first victims, the ones he killed while he was alive, and the ones he killed after he died."

Bobby sighed; he should have figured the kid would get around to that one of these days. It was impossible to keep a secret from Sam Winchester, if he didn't want you to keep it.

"I'm gonna take a shower," Dean announced quietly. He walked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

"How's he doin'?" Bobby asked.

"Oh, he's great," Sam answered, his voice thick with sarcasm. "He's had two or three panic attacks, passed out once, puked his guts out on the side of the road, hasn't eaten in at least a day and a half, and that," he said as he angrily pointed at the bathroom wall, "is his fourth shower in eight hours. I'm surprised he has any skin left."

"Give him time." He looked over Sam's shoulder at the computer screen, and the faces that stared back at him confirmed his suspicions about what had been happening when he'd walked in.

"Figured it out, did ya?" he asked, not unkindly, as he settled down in the other chair.

"Why did he do that?" Sam asked softly and then, almost as if he'd just realized what Bobby had said, he sat forward in his chair. "Wait, you knew? You knew what happened to him?"

Bobby just nodded.

"And you know what he did?"

He nodded again.

"How?"

"It wasn't that hard to figure it out, Sam," he said with a shrug. "I'm the one did all this research the first time. We knew what Holman was, and which one of you he'd go for if he got the chance. When he went after Dean instead ..."

"Why the hell didn't you ever tell me?"

"Hey, you calm yourself down." Bobby leaned back in the chair and sighed. "Listen, kid, it just ... it wasn't my story to tell. It was Dean's. If he'd wanted you to know about it, he'd have told you."

"He told you!"

Bobby shook his head. "He didn't tell me. He didn't have to."

"Why not?"

"Because while you and your daddy were out there sending that bastard to Hell, I was the one back at the motel with Dean, watching him climb out of it."

Sam slumped back in the chair. "You saw how he acted when he woke up."

"I saw how he acted before he realized it wasn't happening anymore. And before he realized who I was. And before he stopped trying to kill me."

Sam looked up in surprise, but Bobby waved him off. "Boy was weak as a newborn kitten. He didn't leave a mark on me."

Sam shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

"So why are you digging all this out now, Sam? Don't you boys have enough to worry about without pulling all this back up?"

Sam closed his eyes, leaned his head forward and rubbed his forehead with his fingers before finally looking back up at Bobby.

"Because Coy Holman's spirit isn't dead."

"What?"

"It's Holman doing this. Killing these boys."

"Why do you think that?" Bobby couldn't have been any more surprised if Sam had told him that the devil himself was doing it. "He's dead. You and your Daddy ..."

Sam gestured at the bathroom again. "Dean saw him. Talked to him, I guess. When I couldn't wake him up." He took a deep breath and blew it out. "So now we know the who. What we don't know is how."

"How'd he survive, ya mean?"

Sam nodded, then reached out suddenly and slammed the laptop shut. He pushed up out of his chair and started pacing around the room. "You and Dad took care of the missing victim, right? The boy in the woods behind the motel?"

"Yeah," he said with a nod.

"And me and Dad salted and burned Holman's bones, which I'm guessing weakened him at least, because he let Dean go. But for some reason, it didn't kill him."

"If Dean's right about what he saw, then yeah."

Sam gestured back at the closed laptop. "According to the newspaper, his house burned down years ago ..."

He had to hide a smile when Sam said those words. John Winchester wasn't the only one who thought a good fire was a viable alternative to an emotional meltdown.

"So if he had some collection of mementos or something, that would have taken care of those."

Bobby nodded again.

"So why is he still here? His bones are gone, his victims' bones are gone, his house is gone. What's keeping him here? What's left?"

Bobby sighed deeply and sat back in his chair. The answer came to him almost immediately, and he leaned his head back.

"Oh, hell."

"What?"

"Think about it, Sam. No home, no victims, no body. What's left? What else can keep an angry spirit tied to this world?"

"Unfinished business," Sam answered without hesitation.

"And what would qualify as 'unfinished business' to a serial killer?"

"The one that got away," Sam whispered. His knees seemed to buckle of their own accord, dropping him to sit gracelessly to the end of his bed. "He's after Dean. I should have seen ... that's why they all look ..." Sam brought shaking hands up to his face and pushed his hair back. When he looked at Bobby again, his eyes were wide and worried. "We've got to get him out of here."

"I'm not going anywhere, Sam."

Dean's voice took both Sam and Bobby by surprise, and they looked up to find him standing in the bathroom door. He'd obviously finished his shower, but they'd been too absorbed in their conversation to notice that the water had been turned off. Neither one of them knew how long he'd been standing there, or how much he'd heard, but if the lack of color in his face was any indication, he'd heard enough.

"Except maybe back to Johnston."

Sam stood immediately. "No!"

"Oh, hell no," Bobby echoed from across the room.

"We're not taking you anywhere near Johnston, Dean," Sam insisted. "He wants to kill you."

Dean shrugged and walked across the room, settling down to sit on the foot of his own bed. "When is some ghost or monster or other not trying to kill one of us, Sam? It's just another day."

"No, it's not," Sam pressed. "Normal spirits come after you when you're trying to kill them, but this isn't like that. This one wants to kill you, specifically, because he knows he'll get off on it!"

Dean swallowed hard and ducked his head, but if Sam noticed, he didn't let it stop him.

"Eight years, Dean. He's been waiting for this for over eight years!"

"That's my point," Dean said. He lifted his head slowly and looked Sam in the eye. "How many so far?"

Sam tilted his head in confusion. "How many what?"

"How many nineteen year old kids have died just because they kinda looked like me?"

Sam went pale instantly, and he looked to Bobby for support, but Bobby had nothing to give him. Dean had latched on to the one thing that was guaranteed to keep his mind made up - innocent people dying in his place.

There'd be no talking him out of whatever it was he intended to do, and both Sam and Bobby knew it.

"How many?" Dean asked again, obviously unwilling to let it go.

"Five," Sam muttered.

"That we know of," Dean added. "What if there's more out there, like Zack Mason, who haven't been found yet? What if David Harrison wasn't the first? What if he started back up years ago? What if he never stopped?"

Sam turned away, running his hands through his hair again as he walked toward the wall. He stopped when he reached it, then turned and leaned his back against it.

"Don't tell me they're not dying because of me, Sam, because they are, and you know it. At least five of them. How many more lives do you want me to destroy just because I'm too sacred of the son of a bitch to do anything to stop him?"

"It's not fear, boy," Bobby put in from his chair. "It's common sense. You got a serial killer huntin' you, ya don't go running into him head-on."

"Why not?" Dean demanded. "He's killing kids because they look like me, Bobby. How the hell do you expect me to live with that?"

"You don't have to," Bobby answered, his lips in a thin line and his voice tight. "You let me and your brother take care of him."

"And how are you gonna do that?" Dean asked, not without heat. "You're not gonna be able to draw him out. Look, I know how this guy operates. Believe me. He gets what he wants, and if you ain't it, he ain't bitin'. Unless you make him a better offer and get 'lucky' enough to have him take you up on it."

Neither Sam nor Bobby had an answer for that one.

"You need bait. And I'm the one he wants. There is no other way to do this, so why are we even arguing about it?"

"If you ain't got a body to burn, the only real way to gank a spirit with unfinished business is to let him finish it," Bobby pointed out.

"Yep," Dean agreed.

"And the only way for Coy Holman to resolve his unfinished business is to kill you." Sam wanted the words to sound angry. He wanted them to sound belligerent. He didn't mean for them to sound as pained and pleading as they did.

Any issue he had with not being able to summon up anger was put to rest the second Dean spoke again.

"Yahtzee."

* * *

**1998**

"Stop it!"

Sam fought against the force holding him to the wall with everything he had. His muscles pulled and strained, but it wasn't enough. He grunted with effort, and sweat – mixed with the water that dripped from his hair – ran down his face and into his eyes. It still wasn't enough.

No matter how hard he struggled, it wasn't enough. But he couldn't give up.

He needed to get that thing away from Dean. He needed to stop it from running its hands down Dean's arms, his ribs, his hips ... its hands were everywhere. Hands that weren't supposed to be touching his brother at all were all over him, and that was wrong and shouldn't be happening, and ...

"Dean!"

Then it kissed him, and Dean's eyes rolled back in his head.

"Get off him! God damn you, fuckin' son of a bitch! Get the fuck away from him! Fuckin' kill you! Get your fuckin' hands off!"

Sam didn't realize that he could control his own body again until he'd thrown himself away from the wall and halfway across the room. He managed to stay on his feet in spite of the way he stumbled and tripped, and he used his sudden momentum to propel himself toward the window in a desperate effort to knock the spirit away from Dean.

Holman glanced across his shoulder with an evil grin on his face, then flicked his wrist again.

The next thing Sam knew, he was flying through the door and into their father's room. He hit the floor hard, but wasted no time in pushing himself back to his feet. He caught one last glimpse of Dean, still pinned against the wall with the spirit standing only inches away from him, before the door slammed shut in his face.

He rammed his whole body into the door at full speed, but nothing happened. It didn't break open; it didn't even rattle on the hinges. He turned the knob over and over again, ignoring the tears that had started running down his face.

"No no no no," he muttered to himself. "You son of a bitch! Leave him alone!"

The scream that came from the other side of the door tore through Sam like a bolt of lightning. He jumped back instinctively and almost fell to his knees. He lifted his hands to his ears, covering them like a child would during a thunderstorm, and tried to block it out, but he couldn't. He couldn't stop that horrible, terrible sound from burning its way into his brain. He had never heard Dean make a sound like that, not once in fourteen years.

"No!" he cried out when the scream died away. He jumped forward and pounded his fists against the door until pain shot up and down his arms, kicked it until he thought his toes would break. "Dean!"

It took several frenzied moments for Sam to realize that there were no more sounds of any kind coming from the other room. He leaned against the door and strained his ears to hear anything other than his own furiously beating heart and frantic gasps for breath. The tears were streaming down his face freely as he pressed his forehead to the wood.

"Oh God ... Dean ... " It was part apology, part prayer, and part brokenhearted sob. He slammed the palm of his right hand against the door one last time and then turned to look at the room he was standing in.

"Think, Sam," he muttered. "Think. Gotta get Dad. Dad'll fix it."

He tore through the room as he talked, looking for something, anything, that could help him. He dug through his father's clothes, and Bobby's, throwing socks, underwear, shirts, anything that was in his way. He glanced at the phone on the bedside table a few different times, but he didn't think his dad had paid for it, so it wouldn't make outside calls. He knew what he needed to find, and he had to find it fast.

He talked to himself the whole time he searched, muttering reassurances that he wanted to believe more than anything else.

"Dad can help," he told himself. "Dad'll know what to do."

He was growing more and more desperate with every second that went by. He didn't know exactly what was going on in that room, but he knew it was bad. That thing had given him the creeps, had looked at him in a way that had scared him like nothing he'd ever seen, and now it had Dean. Some monster had taken his brother, locked him away where Sam couldn't help him, and he couldn't do anything about it.

Just as he was about to give up, he found it – the extra cell phone that John always left behind for Dean. It was sticking out of the pocket of a pair of jeans on the floor, and Sam fell to his knees to grab it. He picked it up and tried to dial, but he was trembling so badly that his first three attempts failed miserably. He slowed down and made himself breathe, trying to force his hands to stop shaking long enough to push the right buttons. Every second that passed was another second that Dean was alone with that thing in the other room, and Sam didn't have time to mess around.

He pressed the phone to his ear, breathing through the terror that ran through him, closing his eyes and concentrating on his own heartbeat, but it was hammering so rapidly that it only upset him more. By the third ring, when his father hadn't yet picked up, Sam could feel his panic levels reaching critical. The walls were closing in on him, sweat and tears ran down his face in almost equal measure, and his breath was coming in harsh, panting spurts. He was losing control of himself so quickly that he didn't realize the phone wasn't ringing anymore until he heard his father's voice.

"Dean, I told you not to ..."

"It's here!" Sam blurted out frantically.

"Wait, what?" Sam heard confusion in his father's voice, but he really didn't care. "Sam, is that you?"

"It's here, Dad! Coy Holman's here!" he said again. "I don't know how it got in, but it did, and it's here, and it's got ...!"

"Are you okay, Sam?" John demanded.

"No! I mean, yeah, I'm fine. It's not me!"

"What's not you?" The confusion was back again. "Sam, what are you talking about?"

"Dean! The spirit's here, and it's got Dean!"

"Dean?" Sam didn't quite understand the surprise in John's voice, but it didn't matter anyway. All that mattered was that his dad was gone, and he had to get him back there.

"It's got him locked in our room, and I don't know what's going on, and I can't get in, and ..."

"You stay where you are, Sam! Do you hear me? We'll be right there." Confusion and surprise were gone; determination and something Sam couldn't quite identify had taken their place. "We're just in the woods behind the motel. Two minutes, Sam, tops."

"Faster. You have to come faster! Oh, God, Dad ... please!"

"I'm coming, Sam."

"It's got Dean. God, Dad, it had him pinned, and I tried, I did, but I couldn't ... and it threw me out and then he screamed, and ... Dad ..."

"I'm coming, kiddo." And he knew it was true. He could hear his father panting from the exertion of running, could hear him tearing through the woods in his effort to get back to the rooms.

The knowledge that help for his brother was only seconds away relieved Sam of most of his burden, and the adrenaline he'd been running on seemed to fade all at once. He collapsed with his shoulder against the wall, still on his knees, cell phone still held loosely in the limp hand that rested against his thigh. The tears that had been running down his cheeks turned into sobs, making his breath hitch in his throat and shaking his shoulders as he let his head fall forward.

"It's got Dean, Dad," he cried to the empty room. "It's got him. It took Dean, and it made him scream, and I need you."

* * *

**2006**

"No way in hell, Dean!" Sam cried out.

"That's insane, boy!" Bobby yelled at the same time.

Dean sighed and lowered his head for the briefest of seconds before looking back up and smiling at each of them in turn. "We need to let him kill me. We don't need to let me stay dead."

Bobby and Sam both blinked at Dean wordlessly, then turned and did the same to each other. Dean was talking crazy, that's all it was. There was absolutely no way that he meant what he'd just said.

"Look, you die in a dream, you die in real life, right?"

Bobby tore his eyes away from Sam long enough to nod in Dean's direction. "Sometimes. Not always."

"Well, that's how he kills them. That's how he almost killed me the last time. He gets them into this dreamworld of his ... and it feels real, even if I ... you ... ya know, it isn't real." He shook his head before going on. "I don't know how the hell it works, it just does, and it's his house. He takes them to his house." Dean stopped and looked at Sam across the room. "That's how I'd been in the basement before. I'd never actually been there, but in my head, in Holman's ... yeah. Anyway, he pulls them into that, and he kills them."

"Kills them how?" Sam forced out. It was plain that he wasn't really sure that he wanted to hear the answer.

"Um ..." Dean ducked his head and licked his lips, obviously uncomfortable with the turn the conversation was taking, but just as obviously convinced that it was important. He scratched at the back of his head absently. "Ugly. And um ... bloody. Slowly. Painfully." Dean shook his head again, as if doing so could shake the memories away. "But when he finally kills them, I think he just strangles them."

"Fingerprints," Sam said. "You had fingerprints on your throat."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. So did David Harrison, and Jonathan Wodtke, and Matthew Albers. I'm guessing they'll find them on Brad Thompson. And I know we didn't look, but I bet Zack Mason had some, too."

Bobby leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows against the table. "You're gonna go and let Coy Holman strangle you to death?"

"Well, sorta," Dean answered. "I mean, he does it in there, it'll take effect out here, right? So all you have to do is watch for me to stop breathing, wait a few minutes, and then bring me back."

"Just like that, huh?" Bobby asked sarcastically.

"Yeah," Dean answered with a defiant nod. "Just like that."

Sam was glad that Bobby seemed to have such an easy time dealing with this conversation, because he definitely wasn't up for it himself. He leaned his shoulders against the wall at his back and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor. He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles and his arms, never taking his eyes off of Dean.

"You know it's not gonna be that easy, don't ya?" Bobby pressed. "Because killin' you ain't all he's gonna do."

Sam's head snapped in Bobby's direction.

Dean lowered his head and his voice. "I know."

"And you're gonna do it anyway? Just gonna give yourself to him, are ya?"

When Dean looked up, his eyes were narrowed in anger, and his voice was tight. "I don't have a choice, Bobby." He seemed to not want Sam to hear what he was saying, but in the cramped confines of the hotel room, that wasn't possible. "I didn't have one then, and I don't have one now."

"How about not dyin', ya stupid idjit?"

"How about he goes and kills another couple dozen kids who've never done anything wrong except look like me?" And suddenly Dean was on his feet, his face flushed red in anger. "Sam said it, Bobby, and you know he's right. Holman's got unfinished business, and it's me. He will not leave until he thinks I'm dead. There is no other way to do this!"

Sam swallowed hard. The tension between Bobby and his brother was incredible. Sam almost couldn't believe that they were even having this conversation, but he had to admit that Dean was probably right. With no body to burn, no mementos to destroy, and no other victims' remains to dispose of, letting him resolve his business with Dean was looking more and more like the answer every minute. But neither he nor Bobby had to like it.

"How long do we wait?" Sam asked softly, drawing everyone's attention back to him. "If we don't wait long enough, it won't work. And if we wait too long ..."

Dean shrugged and settled back down on the bed. "I don't know."

Bobby slammed his hand down on the table. "Well, we're gonna need a better plan than that," he announced. "If we do this, and I do mean 'if,' because I ain't so all-fired sure yet that this is the only choice we got ... but if we do this, we need to have it timed to the second. Dean, look through your daddy's book, see if he ever figured out anything about how long it takes a spirit to let go after its business gets resolved. And Sam, get on that computer of yours and start looking up how long we can let him go before we lose him."

Sam pushed himself up from the floor and practically ran back to the desk, opening the laptop and waiting for it to wake up so he could get to work. Dean likewise jumped to his feet, walked to the duffel and pulled out John's journal.

"What are you gonna do, Bobby?" Sam asked , glancing up at him from the computer.

"I'm gonna sit here and watch you two do all the work," he answered. Sam shook his head and Dean snorted, and both turned back to their tasks. And then very, very softly, so faintly that neither of them could hear him, he continued on. "And I'm gonna pray."


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

**2006**

Bobby leaned back in the chair and raised his arms above his head, stretching out his sore and tired muscles. He'd been sitting in that chair, leaning over the books he'd brought with him from Sioux Falls, for six hours. Between those books and Sam's laptop, which he'd inherited from Sam three hours earlier, he'd managed to fill half a notebook with things that might have a chance of killing Coy Holman.

But the dozens of phone calls he'd made to as many hunters all over the country told him that everything he'd studied was bogus. They all agreed that the only way to be absolutely sure that you'd gotten rid of an angry spirit with unfinished business – not just weakened it, but actually killed it – was to let it finish whatever it was wanting to do. You could control the outcome, they said, and make sure that the damage done wasn't too substantial, but if you had nothing you could burn to destroy the thing with, there really wasn't anything else you could do.

Bobby sighed as he pushed himself to his feet. Keeping the damage to a minimum wasn't even possible, and hadn't been for a long time.

_"But I don't ... if it wasn't, then ... why does it hurt so much?"_

Bobby rubbed his forehead with his hand and walked over to stand between the beds where the boys were sleeping.

Sam was sprawled out on his stomach, arms and legs sticking out every which way. His feet, as usual, were hanging off the end of the bed, but since he hadn't bothered to take his shoes off before collapsing on the mattress, maybe that was for the best. His face was mostly buried in the pillow, but it was turned toward the other bed, the one occupied by his brother. He was in the same place and position he'd been in when he fell asleep, because he'd been watching Dean sleep until he'd finally given up himself.

Bobby couldn't even imagine what all of this was doing to Sam. It was hard enough to find out that someone you loved had been through something so horrible in the first place; finding out that they'd only gone through it to keep it from happening to you had to be damn near impossible. Add to that the fact that Dean hadn't been having the best luck waking up when he did sleep, and the fact that Sam had spent an entire week – alone, damn that John Winchester – thinking that one day soon Dean just wasn't going to wake up at all ... He didn't know how the kid was holding himself together at all.

He bent down to untie Sam's shoes, carefully pulling them off and dropping them to the floor. At least he'd be able to sleep a bit more comfortably like that.

Then he turned to face the other bed.

Dean had been the first to drop, not more than an hour after Bobby had gotten there. He was still wearing Sam's clothes, which Bobby thought looked absolutely ridiculous on him. But all the same, he couldn't help but smile. Curled up on his right side, facing the window with his right hand under his pillow, face relaxed and peaceful, in a baggy shirt, rolled up jeans and bare feet, Dean actually looked at peace. But Bobby knew that it was an illusion.

If this hunt was tearing Sam apart, what did it have to be doing to Dean? He didn't know the exact details of what had gone on with Holman, and he didn't really want to. He knew it was pretty damn bad, and that was more than enough. He didn't ever want to see Dean in a state like he had been that night again.

Bobby shook his head, pulled the spare blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it all the way to Dean's shoulders, then turned and walked back to the chair, lowering himself into it carefully. He glanced at the boys one more time before turning back to his book.

He didn't think he'd ever felt so damned old.

* * *

**1998**

John burst through the door only seconds later. He hadn't bothered pulling the key out of his pocket, and he hadn't bothered to check if it was open. He didn't even come to a complete stop. He just lifted his foot and, with one powerful thrust of his leg, broke it loose from the locks and kicked it open. Then he was inside the room, looking for Sam. He found him immediately, curled up against the wall next to the dresser.

"Sam? You okay?" he asked.

"Dean ..."

John spun away from Sam quickly and stormed toward the door between the two rooms.

Bobby was right behind him, and made it into the room just in time to watch John fail to bust that door open. He kicked it just as he had the other one, but it held fast. It didn't even look like it shook.

"Dean!" John was screaming at the closed door as he pounded on it with his fists. "Can you hear me? Dean!"

"Holman's holding it closed," Bobby pointed out, and he wasn't at all surprised or affected by the glare John shot him across his shoulder.

"Fuck that," John said. He pulled a handful of salt from the pocket of his coat and flung it at the door, loosening the spirit's hold just long enough to deliver another giant kick that almost broke it off its hinges. John had his shotgun raised and was in the room almost before Bobby even realized that it had worked.

Dean was pinned to the wall, just like Sam had said he was, and he wasn't alone.

Coy Holman was standing there, entirely too close to Dean, who looked like he'd passed out. The boy's head hung forward limply, his chin against his chest and his eyes closed. There was no muscle resistance in his arms or legs, and Holman's hands around his wrists seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright.

"Get the fuck away from my son."

John's voice was low, cold and deadly. Bobby had never been on the receiving end of that particular tone of voice, and he was grateful for that. Everything he'd ever seen that had been was dead now.

"Uh oh. Daddy's home."

Bobby ran in behind John and was immediately flung across the room, only stopping because he slammed into the wall behind the beds. He pulled against it out of instinct, even though he knew it was pointless.

John took advantage of the spirit's second of distraction, stepped forward far enough to press the barrel of his shotgun against the side of its head and pulled the trigger.

The result was instantaneous. Coy Holman disappeared with a pained shriek, and Dean's limp body crashed to the floor.

"Sam!" John called out. He fell to his knees at Dean's side and pressed his fingers against his son's neck. "Make sure that damn salt line is broken and prop the door open. Bobby, you know any kinda chant that can control that thing?"

"I can banish it from the rooms," Bobby answered.

"Then get that fucking thing outta here!" John, satisfied that the pulse he'd located meant that his oldest child was still among the living, glanced up and through the door into the other room. He saw Sam scuffing the salt with his foot as he wedged the door open with a chair. The kid was holding it together really well out there now, despite the condition he'd been in when John had kicked the door in.

Maybe he had what it took to be a hunter after all.

Bobby had started his banishing spell, and Sam had finished clearing the door, so Coy Holman's spirit was on its way out. That left John free to attend to Dean, who was still lying in a heap against the wall. John put one hand behind his head and the other behind his back, pulling him up gently until his forehead was resting against John's chest.

"Dean?" he said softly, shaking Dean's shoulders lightly. "Come on, Dean. It's time to wake up now."

Bobby was still working his magic, and Sam was hovering in the door between the rooms, ready to put the salt line back as soon as Bobby gave him the signal. John blocked them both out. All of his attention, every last ounce of it, was focused on Dean, who hadn't responded to him at all.

"Dean!" John shook him harder. The only change was that Dean's head fell away from John's chest and flopped back across his arm. John jumped in surprise and what he might admit, one day in the distant future, was a healthy dose of fear.

"Bobby!"

Bobby appeared behind him and knelt at his side quickly. "Sam's fixing the salt and wedging the door shut," he said. Then he looked down at Dean's closed eyes and lax face, and he knew what had John so frantic. "Too late?"

John looked up, his eyes wider than Bobby thought he'd ever seen them. "He's got him," he said, keeping his voice low in an obvious effort to keep Sam from hearing either the words or the panic behind them. "We're too late. He's just like all the others."

"We still have time, John. We don't know how long ..." Bobby let his words trail off when he saw the anger growing again in John's eyes. "Let's get him on the bed," he said, moving around to Dean's head to help John lift him. "Then we'll figure out what to do next."

"I got him," John said. He shifted his arms so that one went under Dean's arms and across his back and the other went under his knees. He used his legs to slowly push himself to his feet, taking a few seconds to adjust Dean's weight in his arms, ignoring the way his head fell back over his arm. "I got ya, Dean," he whispered. "It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna fix this; I promise. You just hold on."

"Dad."

The voice floated in from behind him as he and Bobby settled Dean down on his bed. John took a few moments to check Dean over for any other injuries, taking in the bruises on his throat and around his wrists, watching as Bobby pulled up his shirt and revealed the circle of bruises in the middle of his chest, right above his heart. John massaged his eyes with his fingers before pressing his hand against his mouth.

"Dad?"

John closed his eyes for a second, using the time to push down everything he was feeling. The fear was gone from his expression when he turned toward Sam, who'd moved further into the room but was still standing back away from the bed.

"Is he okay?" If ever there had been a moment when Sam actually looked as young as he really was, that was it. "Is he awake? Is he all right? He was screaming ..."

John took one step toward his youngest and put a hand on his shoulder, heading off the panic that both he and Bobby heard creeping back into his voice.

"Calm down, Sam," John commanded gently. "Last thing I need right now is you passing out on me."

Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Bobby watched Sam's hand come up to rest on top of John's, and he had to wonder if the boy really was pulling strength from that connection. It wouldn't have surprised him to find out he was – these Winchesters were a unique breed. It only took a few seconds for Sam to get himself back under control, and once he did, he opened his eyes and nodded at John.

"Physically, he's fine. Just some bruises. But, no, he's not awake." John paused, licking his lips as he considered whether or not to tell Sam the truth about what was happening. Neither John nor Bobby could even guess at exactly what Sam had seen before Holman had locked him out, but it was probably safe to assume that he'd seen enough to not be surprised by anything they could say.

The problem was that Sam was still just a kid. And even though John had made a few questionable parenting decisions through the years, Bobby had no doubt that this particular spirit's proclivities were something John didn't want Sam knowing about just yet. Especially in light of the fact that it had Dean under its control.

John glanced across at Bobby quickly, asking his opinion without speaking. Bobby shrugged as he reached for the blanket at the end of the bed and started pulling it up across Dean.

"Okay, Sam, here's the thing. Coy Holman is a ... well, he's a killer, son. Real evil son of a bitch. He killed six teenage boys from all over Iowa while he was alive, and he's killed six more here in Johnston."

"As a spirit?"

John nodded. "We don't know how he does it, because ... well, we just don't." Bobby agreed with John not telling Sam that part. The boy didn't need to hear that they had no witnesses to interview because none of them had survived. "He does something to them, puts them in some sort of a coma, and they just don't wake up from it."

Sam's eyes went impossibly wide at that, all the color drained from his face, and he swallowed hard. "So he's gonna ... Dean's gonna die?"

"No!" John bellowed, but he calmed himself back down quickly. "No, Sammy. Your brother is not going to die. Me and Bobby, we're gonna fix this."

"We already might've weakened him," Bobby put in from where he sat on the bed at Dean's side. "We don't know what he does to them. Us breakin' in on him might be enough."

"Yeah, but it might not," Sam pointed out. He turned back to John again.

"Just give us a few minutes, Sam," John said. "We'll figure out how to get Dean back, and he'll be fine, okay? Just give us a chance to figure out how to fix it."

John didn't really need time to figure out what to do, because he already knew, and Bobby knew it, too. What they needed was a few more minutes to get Sam calmed down, to make sure he'd be able to see to Dean while they were gone, and then they'd be on their way to the cemetery. They'd already burned the body of the victim they'd found in the woods behind the motel, so there was nothing else to hold him here.

Lighting Coy Holman's ass up was going to be a distinct pleasure.

But as certain as Bobby was of what he and John were going to do, he also knew that John was a bit more careful talking about things like that in front of Sam. Sam seemed to have a bit of a problem with the concept of killing things that looked or had been human. It was an understandable problem to have; Dean had had some issues with it, too, when he was younger. Werewolves and black dogs and wendigos were one thing. Humans were entirely different.

"I already know how to fix it," Sam said, with more hatred and determination in his voice than Bobby had ever heard.

"What's that?" John asked, with another sideways glance at Bobby. Neither one of them could have imagined the words that would come out of Sam's mouth next.

"We can dig the bastard up, salt and burn his worthless ass, and send him straight to Hell."

* * *

**2006**

Bobby grabbed his ringing cell phone up from the table and flipped it open as fast as he could, checking quickly to make sure that the boys hadn't stirred. "Just a sec," he said into the phone. He quietly pushed himself away from the desk once more, crossed the room, and was out the door in a matter of seconds.

"Yeah?" he said.

"You got them, Bobby? How are they?"

Bobby leaned against the wall next to the door, blinking against the early afternoon sun. He'd kept the curtains pulled in the room so the boys could sleep better, and his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness.

"Yeah, I got 'em. They're sleepin' right now."

"But how are they?"

Bobby sighed. "'Bout as good as you'd expect, I reckon. Sam's a mess. He said he's been distracted ever since they got there yesterday. Can't think straight. But he managed to figure out what Dean did that night. I walked in on the end of that conversation, and it wasn't pretty."

"And Dean?"

Bobby adjusted the bill of his hat and looked back at the door to their room. "He's dealin', I guess. Good as he ever does, anyway. Pretendin' he's fine, sayin' it don't bother him. Truth is, boy's scared shitless, and it shows." The only answer was a deep sigh. "You comin'?"

"You know I can't."

Bobby pushed away from the door and walked around the corner of the motel, getting as far from the door and the possibility of the boys overhearing him as possible. How he'd ever expected this man to be reasonable about this ...

"Oh, I know that, do I? You know what else I know? I know that they're here alone, Sam's falling apart, Coy Holman's not dead, he's set after Dean again, and they damn well need you! That's what I know!"

"They've got you. You'll look out for them, won't you?"

"Who the hell you think you're talkin' to? Of course I'm lookin' out for 'em, but damn it, John, it's not me they're needin' right now."

"Have you figured out how to get rid of him?"

Bobby sighed and slumped back against the building. "Dean did. Neither Sam or me either one like it, but there's nothin' else we can be sure'll work. I've spent the whole damn day lookin' for another way, but it don't look like there is one." There was no response. "Are you even gonna ask what it is?"

"Am I going to like it?"

"Hell, no," Bobby answered hotly. "Might get you to bring your worthless ass out here and stop him."

"That's why I'm not asking."

"So you'll just stay wherever you are, wait until you get the next message from Sam, tellin' you that Dean's actually died this time? Or maybe from Dean, beggin' you to help him save Sam? You went a whole week not knowing if your oldest was alive or dead, John! How the hell do you ...?"

"I knew, Bobby. The same way I knew they were okay in Lawrence. The same way I'll know they're still okay tomorrow."

"Fuck you, John Winchester."

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and Bobby was starting to think maybe John had hung up on him. "If we'd just burned Holman first that night ..."

"It wouldn't'a done a damn bit of good, because he'd've still been tied to that boy in the woods," Bobby pointed out. "And now's not the time to go questionin' what we did. We did everything we knew to do. It just went sideways on us."

"No," John said. "It went sideways on my kids."

As was too often the case with John Winchester, Bobby couldn't disagree.

"Take care of my boys for me, Bobby," John said. "Get them out of this. And this time, make sure the son of a bitch suffers."


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

**2006**

Bobby let them both sleep until they woke up on their own. For Sam, that was just after noon. Dean slept until almost four. They spent the next few hours preparing themselves for what they were about to do, with Sam and Bobby doing as much research as they could while Dean alternated between pacing around the room, pretending to watch television, and showering. Sam ordered burgers and fries from a little local place down the road from the motel in the hopes that Dean would eat something. He wasn't really surprised when he didn't, and Sam didn't press the issue.

They waited until dark to head back to Johnston, for no real reason other than they wanted to put it off as long as possible. But they had a job to do, and they were going to do it, no matter how much none of them really wanted to.

It was silent in the Impala as Sam drove through the darkness. For once, Dean hadn't argued about the driving arrangements and he sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at nothing. Neither of them really wanted to talk, particularly Dean, but Sam knew that they needed to. He waited until they were halfway there, not far from where Dean had woken up on the way out, to break the stillness.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

Dean's answer was a sigh and a humorless chuckle.

"Why?" he asked again.

"Why would I?" Dean said. He didn't move, didn't turn away from the window. "It's not exactly something to go shouting from the rooftops, ya know. Besides, not telling you was kinda the point, since you weren't ever supposed to know."

"But what happened to you ..."

"Nothing happened to me," Dean insisted, placing emphasis on the word 'nothing.' "I keep saying that, but you don't seem to be hearing it. Nothing happened to me."

"Damn it, Dean, stop it!"

Dean shook his head and leaned back against the seat. He turned his head slowly, pulling himself away from the darkness and looking at Sam.

"You're terrified of this guy. Why don't you just admit what he ..."

"It wasn't real," Dean said. "None of it. It never happened anywhere but in my head."

Sam shook his head vehemently and gnashed his teeth together.

"The real stuff wasn't that bad. The guy got a little handsy, okay? You saw that. So he kissed me, so what? I woke up, I had a couple of bruises, I ..."

"Tried to kill Bobby."

Dean closed his eyes and turned away again. "I was a little confused."

"You thought it was real."

"I got over it."

"Did you?" Sam couldn't contain his anger anymore. He wasn't mad at Dean for what happened, far from it, but he was livid about the way Dean was treating it so casually, like it didn't matter in the slightest. Like the fact that it had only happened in his head meant it hadn't happened at all. "How many showers have you taken in the last twenty-four hours?"

"Shut up, Sam," Dean said tiredly.

"No." Sam knew that if they weren't driving down the road at seventy miles an hour, Dean would have already been gone. As it was, his brother was wound like a coiled spring, ready to jump the second he saw a chance. "You need to deal with this. You're about to walk right back into it, offer yourself up again, and you need to ..."

"Deal with what?" Dean asked angrily, pushing himself up in the seat and turning back around. "It's all a big mindfuck, Sam! Literally, yeah. But that's all it ever was, and all it's ever been. What the hell do you expect me to 'deal with' in the next hour that I haven't already dealt with in the past eight years?"

Sam stared out the windshield, watching the night fly past. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the muscles in his hands ached, and his jaw hurt from how tightly he pressed his teeth together.

"You want to know why I didn't tell you? It was because I didn't want this to happen."

"What to happen?" Sam demanded. "Me to know the truth? Me to understand what you gave up for me?"

"You to blow it all out of proportion and make a big deal out of. I know what it was, Sam. I know what happened. I was there!"

"And you thought it was real!" Sam shot back. "You didn't know the difference, not at first. You said so yourself."

"He fucked with my head, Sam."

"Fucked more than that."

He regretted the words the second they passed his lips, but he couldn't take them back. He hadn't meant to say it, hadn't even really wanted to think it, but there was nothing he could do about it. He risked a sideways glance at Dean, expecting to see anger, narrow eyes and clenched fists. He fully expected to be hit for what he'd said, because it was crude and thoughtless as hell, and he deserved it.

But instead of glaring at him, Dean was staring past him, out the windshield and into the darkness again. He hadn't moved, and in the dim glow of a passing streetlight, Sam could see how pale he was. His eyes were wide, his hands were open, and there was no anger in Dean's expression.

There was shame.

"Shit, Dean ... I don't ... that was ..." Sam took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry."

Dean rubbed his forehead with his hand, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Then he slowly turned away and sank back down in his seat until his forehead was pressed against the window.

"Dean, please. I didn't mean that."

There was no answer. And Sam knew there never would be.

* * *

**1998**

Sam had never really liked this part of the job.

He'd never really been allowed to go hunting with his father, even when Dean was. The most he'd ever done was sit in the car and wait for them to finish. But most of the time, he either stayed at whatever motel they were calling home that week or, for the longer hunts, stayed with Bobby or Pastor Jim. And he'd always preferred that, because the stories he heard them all tell were more than enough to convince him that he didn't want any part of it.

He knew it was necessary. He understood why it had to be done and how it worked. But the thought of digging up a grave and setting fire to decomposed or decomposing human remains still disgusted him. He'd never thought it possible for him to gain the same satisfaction from it that his dad and Dean did. Just the smell that clung to them when they came back from a cemetery – the acrid stench of burning hair and melting skin – made him sick to his stomach.

But standing in that Des Moines cemetery at midnight, with a light snow falling around him, manning the shotgun as his father shoveled away the dirt that filled Coy Holman's grave, Sam thought there was nothing else in the world more important than what he and his father were about to do.

It had taken almost three hours for John to dig as deep as he had, and Sam figured that he had to be getting close to the coffin. It was a quick dig, and Sam knew it. He thought it just might be the fastest his father had ever dug a grave. John was as wet from sweat as he was from the snow that had melted on his skin, red-faced from the exertion and cold, panting out frosted breaths as he pushed himself to dig even faster.

Because the three hours it had taken them so far were three hours that Dean was under the control of the thing that had attacked him. And that was three hours too long.

Sam had tried off and on for the past three hours to get his father to talk to him, to give him some indication of what was happening to Dean, but John had been reluctant to answer. All he would say was that Dean was in trouble and that they were going to fix it. The not knowing what that thing was doing to his brother was driving Sam crazy.

"Do you know what it's ...?"

"No, I don't," John answered with a huff, as he threw out another shovelful of dirt. "We've already been over this, Sam. I don't know exactly what it does."

Sam couldn't quite shake the feeling that John was lying about that, but he didn't dwell on it for long. "Uncle Bobby kicked it out, though, right? It can't get back in?"

"Not physically, no." Another mound of dirt flew out of the hole. "He's been banished and salted out. But if he's got some sort of connection with Dean, then ..."

"What, like he's in Dean's head?"

"I got it!" he heard his father shout. Then he heard a grunt, a few hard thumping noises, and wood splintering. "Got you now, you sick son of a bitch. Heads up, Sam!"

The shovel flew out of the hole and landed atop the pile of snow-dusted earth next to the open grave. Then John himself appeared, holding his arm up.

Sam held the shotgun loosely in his left hand and reached for his father with his right, helping him up and out of the grave without slipping on the slick grass even once.

As soon as he was out of the hole, John started digging through the duffel bag he'd carried from the car. It was only a few seconds before he stood again, with a canister of salt in one hand and a bottle of lighter fluid in the other.

"The snow is gonna make this harder," he said. "So we have to make extra sure that we get the bastard the first time." He handed the lighter fluid to Sam to hold and turned back to the grave.

Sam stayed at his side as he peered down into the splintered coffin for the first time. It was Coy Holman, all right. He hadn't been in the ground long enough to become that badly decayed or disfigured, and Sam recognized him immediately. John had broken the coffin all the way to his waist, but Sam couldn't see anything but the face of the thing he'd seen in his motel room three hours earlier. The thing he'd seen attack his brother. The thing that he and his father were going to kill.

Sam would never forget that face as long as he lived.

John turned the salt canister upside down and dumped a liberal amount of salt on Holman's face and chest. When he righted it again and started to close the lid, Sam grabbed his hand.

"More, Dad," Sam said.

"What?"

"You said make extra sure, right?" Sam turned away from his father to glare back down at the monster in the coffin. "Use the whole damn thing."

John nodded wordlessly, opened the lid completely, and emptied the canister onto the remains below. Sam smiled as he watched it fall.

"When this is over," John said, "you and I need to have a talk about that mouth of yours."

"Whatever," Sam said. He flipped open the lid on the lighter fluid and started to turn it over in his hands, but John grabbed it away from him.

"I'll do it, Sam. You can watch if you want, but you're not doing this yourself."

"Why not?" Sam asked as John starting dousing the corpse. "You'd let Dean."

"Dean's older than you," John pointed out. He glanced up at the sky, at the dark clouds drifting in front of the moon and the snow that still fell from them, and instead of putting the lighter fluid away as he normally would, he kept squeezing.

"And I'm more involved in this hunt than he's ever been," Sam insisted. "This isn't just some random spirit that's hurting other people, Dad. This one's hurting Dean."

"I know that," John said tightly. He capped the lighter fluid and tossed it back at the duffel bag, then pulled a box of matches from his pocket.

"He's my brother."

"And he's my son."

Sam felt the flush of shame rise in his cheeks. He knew his dad was right. This wasn't a fight that Sam could win, and it wasn't one they should be having at that moment, anyway.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I just ... I can't just stand here. That thing, it was ... Dad, you don't know. What it said, what it ... what it did ... and when he screamed ..."

John turned toward him, and Sam could see the understanding in his eyes, see the pain and desperation that he knew were in his own.

"Dad, please."

John held the matches out to him, slowly and hesitantly. But when Sam reached for them, he pulled them back slightly.

"You don't have to do this, Sam. I think I'd feel better if you didn't."

"I know," Sam said. "But I need to be the one to do this, Dad. I really do."

John nodded and handed the matches over. If there was one thing that Sam knew his father understood, it was the need for revenge. Sam pulled one match out of the box and struck it against the side.

"Your brother, he can't ... he doesn't ever need to know about this, Sam."

Sam dropped the lit match into the box, held it for a few seconds and watched the other tips ignite, then dropped it into the grave.

"No," he said, as the flames burst to life around Holman's corpse. Sam stared at them, transfixed, as they ate away the skin and muscle and bone of the monster in the coffin.

"He won't."

* * *

Dean came up off the bed without warning, and Bobby didn't have time to duck the fist that flew at his face.

"Get off me!"

It should have knocked Bobby off the bed, and he knew that. A punch from Dean Winchester, thrown with as much hatred as Bobby saw in his eyes, should have damn near broken his jaw. But it was so weak that it barely registered as a hit at all.

"Dean, hey," Bobby said, quietly. "Dean! Look at me, boy."

Dean scrambled back on the bed, pushing himself against the headboard as his eyes darted around the room frantically.

"No no no," he muttered. "Sammy!"

"Dean!" Bobby reached for him, but Dean knocked his hands away.

"Don't you fuckin' ... don't touch me!" Dean's left hand shot under his pillow, and when he pulled it back up, it was wrapped around the handle of a wicked-looking hunting knife. "Touch me again, I'll fuckin' kill you. Swear to God!"

"Dean." Bobby kept his voice calm but firm and held his hands up, palms out. "I'm not gonna hurt you, boy. Just look at me."

"Where's Sam!" Dean demanded. "If you hurt him, if you ... no ..." Dean closed his eyes and his head fell forward. Bobby tried to move closer to him, but Dean's head snapped back up and he brandished the knife. "Stay the fuck back!"

Dean's eyes were wild, unfocused, and filled with fear. He reminded Bobby of a wounded animal, one that knew it was dying and was striking out in a desperate effort to save itself. He really had no idea where he was, couldn't yet tell the difference between the motel and wherever he'd been before.

And the things he was saying, the way he was acting ... he was all but confirming Bobby's theories – and John's deepest fears – about Coy Holman.

"Dean," Bobby tried again. "You're safe, and Sam's fine." Dean was looking around frantically, searching for Sam. "He's not here, but he's with your daddy, and he's fine. It's all okay now, but I need you to look at me."

Dean's breathing grew ragged, and he blinked rapidly. His eyes still darted around the room in a panic, but more and more often, they lighted on Bobby.

Bobby didn't move, just sat on the side of the bed with his hands raised.

It didn't take long, just a few more minutes, for Dean's breathing to slow down, for him to look around the room and see where he really was. For him to look at Bobby and actually – finally – see him.

"Unc ... Uncle Bobby?"

Bobby didn't speak, only nodded his head.

"Help me."

Bobby caught him as he crumbled, pulled him into his arms and tight against his chest. Dean was crying, sobbing in a way that Bobby hadn't heard since Dean was a child, and he couldn't stop the tears that sprang into his own eyes. He felt Dean's hand grasping at his shirt, reaching desperately for something he could hold on to, something real, and Bobby held him tighter.

"It's all right, Dean," he whispered. "I gotcha. It's gonna be okay now." He kissed the top of Dean's head, then rested his cheek against it. The boy in his arms was beyond broken. Bobby couldn't even begin to imagine what Dean had been through, what that sick bastard had done to him. But he did know that he had to do something to keep Dean from slipping away completely, and he had to do it fast.

Dean needed to move past this, needed a way to climb out of whatever hell Holman had put him through. He needed someone to throw him a line he could grab and hold on to, and there was only one thing Bobby could think to do.

"It wasn't real, Dean. Do you hear me? It was just a nightmare. You're fine. Nothing happened. It was all in your head, son. Just a dream."

He held Dean until the boy's sobs had abated, repeating the words, "It wasn't real. It didn't happen," until his tears had run dry and his breaths were even. Then he put a steadying hand behind his head and lowered him back down to his pillow. "You just rest, now," he said. "Your Daddy killed that spirit that was messin' with your head. Him and Sam'll be back real soon. And then we'll get outta here."

Bobby tucked the knife back under the pillow and wasn't surprised when Dean's right hand went after it and curled around the handle. Then he reached for the blanket Dean had thrown off. As he straightened it out, he heard Dean's voice, so soft and young behind him.

"Wasn't real ... didn't happen?"

"You've got a few bruises on ya," Bobby answered. "Nothing else. Anything else you're rememberin' is just your mind playin' tricks on you." He pulled the blanket up and over him again, all the way to his shoulders. The green eyes that stared up at him, so open and trusting in a way they hadn't been in years, almost made him reconsider telling him the truth.

But open and trusting was better than the wild, shattered, and desperate creature Dean had been when he'd first woken up. Dean was making it through this, no matter what Bobby had to do. If it meant denying what had happened, taking advantage of Dean's trust to make him believe it wasn't real, well then, Bobby was prepared to live with that.

"Spirits can mess with your head, make you remember things that didn't happen. You know that. And this one you just tangled with was a real nasty son of a bitch. Don't you pay it no mind."

"But I don't ... if it wasn't, then ... why does it hurt so much?"

Bobby didn't have an answer for that. At least, not one that he was prepared to give.

He placed his left hand against the side of Dean's face, then gently brushed his hair out of the boy's eyes. "You just rest now, Dean. Everything'll be okay when you wake up."

* * *

**2006**

It had been a split-second rash decision made in the heat of the moment, a desperate effort to bring Dean back to the real world before the one he'd been trapped in drove him mad. But Bobby had always wondered if maybe it had done more harm than good.

He told himself that it had been the only way, that what Dean had been through had been too much for his mind to process, so terrible that he was on the edge of not coming back from it at all. And Dean had come back, had only taken a few weeks to work through his memories and decide which ones were real and which ones weren't. He'd stopped jumping at sudden noises in just a day or two, and the nightmares had faded in just a little over a week. The constant showering thing had lasted another week after that, but he'd eventually gotten past that, too.

But even though it might have saved Dean then, it sure as hell wasn't doing him any favors now.

Everyone involved in that hunt had gotten their chance at closure – everyone except the one person that needed it most. Sam had been the one to send Holman's ass up in flames and straight to Hell. John had burned Dean's clothes and all of their research in a trashcan not far from Sioux Falls. And Bobby had made a detour through the west side of town and burned Holman's damn house to the ground.

But Dean? All he'd ever been allowed to do was pretend none of it bothered him, because it wasn't real and nothing had happened to him.

Bobby had decided on the drive down that he was going to tell Dean what he'd done in that motel room eight years earlier. He was going to tell him that it had happened, that it had been real, and that he had been wrong to tell him it wasn't. Dean needed to admit to himself that he was scared of Holman and that it wasn't a weakness or an overreaction to nothing.

Dean needed to own up to his fear if he was going to control it. Because if he couldn't control it, he'd be walking right back into Holman's hell unarmed and with no hope of getting back out.

The Impala turned into the motel parking lot, and Bobby followed, pulling up and parking right next to it. He sat for a few seconds, looking out the windshield at the motel. He remembered everything that had happened in this place, everything they'd almost lost there. It was a flash of movement in front of him, the moving curtain in the window of the room next to the one the boys had rented, that pulled Bobby's attention back to present day. He sighed and climbed out of his car.

He walked around behind both cars, stopping when he reached Sam's side at the trunk.

"How's he doin' with this?" he asked.

Sam shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know. We had a fight on the way here, and he hasn't said a word to me since." Sam slung the duffel bag he'd just filled with weapons across his shoulder. "Shit, Bobby ..."

"He's not talking?" Bobby felt a sudden jump in apprehension and he walked past Sam and toward Dean's door quickly. "At all?"

Sam sighed. "Yeah, but he's been doing that off and on for the past two days."

Bobby looked through the window at Dean, and the apprehension he'd felt became full-blown panic. "He's already asleep!" he called out as he reached for the door handle.

"What?" Sam's voice cracked on the word, and he slammed the trunk shut. "No. No, he can't be. We weren't ready. He wasn't ready!"

Sam was jogging toward them when Bobby pulled the door open.

They both jumped to catch him when he toppled out of the car, but Sam got there first. Dean fell into his arms bonelessly, and Sam struggled to keep from dropping him. He let the bag of weapons slide off his shoulder and fall to the ground.

"Bobby!" he called out in a panic.

But Bobby was already there, stepping between the boys and the open door. He leaned forward and pressed his hand against Dean's chest, both sure of and terrified by what he was going to learn.

"He's not breathing."

Bobby grabbed the door key out of Sam's hand and ran for the room. He fumbled a bit before finally pushing it open. Sam was muttering to himself as he reached into the car, pulled Dean out, and stood up. He turned toward the open motel room door and crossed the parking lot as fast as he could.

Bobby ran back, picked up the bag of weapons and slammed the car door. He pretended not to notice the way Dean flopped around in Sam's arms as he passed them. Just because the boy wasn't breathing, it didn't mean he was dead. And yes, this was what they'd come here to do, but they needed more time. Dean needed more time. Damn it, they weren't ready.

Sam was just settling Dean down on the bed furthest from the door when Bobby ran in and closed the door behind him. He glanced up at Bobby, eyes wide in fear.

"This can't happen," Sam said. "He wasn't ready. We ... I said something ... God, Bobby, the last thing I said to him ..."

Bobby had to take charge of the situation, because it was obvious that Sam was in no position to do it. Bobby couldn't blame him for that, but Dean still wasn't breathing, and until they got that fixed, everything else would have to wait.

"Outta the way, Sam," Bobby said as he pushed him away from Dean's side. "Get the shotgun and look sharp. Because ready or not, here it comes."


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

It was the longest two minutes of Sam's life. It was bad enough to know that his brother wasn't breathing; it was worse to know that he couldn't do anything to fix it.

Back in Coon Rapids, Dean had chosen Bobby to be the one to keep an eye on his pulse and to start CPR the second his heart stopped. Sam had agreed with Dean's decision at the time, but at that moment, standing uselessly at the foot of the bed, he regretted it. He could only watch as Bobby pressed his fingers against Dean's neck waiting for him to die. Sam wanted nothing more than to shove Bobby out of the way, kneel at his brother's side and breathe life back into him before he was too far gone to save.

He saw Bobby jump, heard him whisper, "That's it." He felt dizzy and lightheaded as Bobby pinched Dean's nose closed, tipped his head back, and gave the first two breaths. His own chest ached when Bobby pressed his hands against Dean's sternum and pumped his heart five times. Again and again, and then Bobby checked for a pulse.

"Damn it!" Bobby shouted, and Sam almost jumped out of his skin.

Bobby's movements became more frantic, the breaths he was giving became deeper, the chest compressions became more violent. He checked Dean's pulse once more. "Come on, boy! Breathe!"

Sam didn't know if Bobby was talking to Dean or to him, because at that moment, neither one of them was doing what he said.

He couldn't believe they'd let Dean talk them into this. They'd been so stupid; they'd given in too easily. They hadn't spent enough time looking for another way, and standing above his brother's lifeless body, Sam knew. Knew there'd been another way, there had to have been, they just hadn't found it. And now his brother was dead, he'd died exactly the way the cardiologist had said he would, and this time there was nothing Sam could do about it at all.

Bobby gave two more frantic breaths and then pulled away. Sam looked at him in shock, his heart hammering against the inside of his chest, his lungs heaving and his whole body shaking.

"Bobby!"

Then Dean's back arched up off the bed and he took a deep, gasping breath of his own.

Sam raised a trembling hand to his mouth and dragged in a gulp of air.

"He's back," Bobby announced unnecessarily as his shoulders slumped in relief. When he looked up at Sam from the opposite end of the bed, there was a tired, shaky smile on his face. "We got him."

Sam gave Bobby a smile of his own in return. "So did it work?" he asked, breathlessly. "He's gonna be okay, right? Is Holman gone?"

Bobby glanced around the room nervously. "I don't think we'll know that til ..."

A shift in the light above Dean's sleeping form caught both of their attention, and suddenly, there was something else in the room with them. It was right between them, kneeling on the bed on top of Dean, straddling his hips, with its fingers wrapped around Dean's throat.

Coy Holman wasn't gone.

It hadn't worked. Dean had almost died, and it hadn't fucking worked! And Holman was still killing him, strangling him right in front of them.

Sam lifted his shotgun, aimed it directly at the back of Holman's head, and fired.

Nothing happened.

Bobby ducked from the salt pellets that scattered past his head, then spun back to face Sam. "Iron! You need iron!"

"What? Why?" Sam asked in confusion, falling to his knees and digging through the duffel for the pearl-handled Colt.

"Mara, Sam! He's a mara! Shoot him!"

Sam didn't even take the time to get off the floor, he just spun back toward the bed, aimed the gun, and fired. Holman dissipated into the air.

The people in the next room over banged on the wall they shared, the same wall Sam had just buried a bullet in. Bobby leaned over the bedside table and smacked the wall twice, and the pounding stopped.

Sam climbed back to his feet shakily. "A mara? Like a nightmare demon mara? How do you know that?" he asked as he stumbled forward.

Bobby nodded slowly. "Kills 'em when they're sleeping, sits on their chest, and has black eyes."

"But he's not possessing anybody!" Sam argued.

"Maras don't have to. They're still demons, but they can pick any form they want." Bobby sighed. "I guess he picked his own."

"He's a demon? Coy Holman is a demon." Sam never released his grip on the Colt, in case he needed to use it again, but he did let his head fall forward into his hands. A few seconds passed, then he snapped his head up and threw his arms in the air. "What the fuck, Bobby?"

"I don't know," Bobby answered. "But we know for sure that he went downstairs when you ganked him the first time."

Sam rubbed his forehead with his fingers, trying to soothe away the sudden ache behind his eyes. In a way, it made everything easier, because it all suddenly made sense. Every piece of the puzzle that hadn't quite fit now lined up perfectly. "He's what David Harrison summoned in the cemetery that night. And that's why there's no trace of him in eight and a half years. He wasn't here."

But in another way, it made this job a whole lot harder, because there was no way that they knew of to kill a demon.

Then there was a dark shadow forming above Dean's chest; Sam shot it and it disappeared, but it renewed his sense of urgency.

"We can't hold him off forever. We've gotta get Dean out of here."

"No," Bobby insisted. "We gotta find a way to finish this. We ain't lettin' this happen again."

"So what do we do?" Sam asked.

There was another series of knocks from next door, which Bobby answered the same way he had before.

"You can exorcise a mara, same as any demon. It'll break 'em apart and send 'em packing. But we can't do a normal exorcism, 'cause he can climb right back into Dean's head to get away from us."

"A mara," Sam breathed. "Feeds on fear, doesn't it?" He looked down at Dean, thinking about how scared Dean had been of doing this, how scared he was of Holman, how afraid he'd always been to even admit just how scared he was. "Fucking perfect!"

And there was no more time to think, because Holman was back and reaching for Dean's throat again. Sam lifted the Colt to shoot him, but he suddenly had another idea.

_"Make him a better offer and get 'lucky' enough to have him take you up on it."_

There was no time to run it past Bobby, and he seriously doubted that Bobby would agree with it anyway. He could always ask for forgiveness later, but there was no time to ask for permission.

"Coy Holman!" Sam called out. He dropped the gun and stepped forward until he was standing right next to the bed, between it and the wall.

"What are you doing?" Bobby hissed, but Sam ignored him.

"Coy, look at me!"

Slowly, very slowly, Holman turned his head. The soulless black eyes bore into Sam, raking over him exactly as they had years before. The demon's left hand rested against Dean's chest, but neither of his hands were around his throat, and Sam was going to take what he could get. What he was doing was dangerous and probably stupid, and he knew that. And there was a huge chance that it was going to backfire and blow up right in his face spectacularly, but he didn't care. He'd already watched his brother die once that day, and he was not going to stand there and let it happen again.

The smile that made its way across Coy Holman's lips was inhuman at best, irredeemably evil at worst. "Sammy," he whispered throatily. "Little Sammy Winchester."

"It's Sam," he corrected automatically. He nodded his head toward Dean. "Leave him alone."

"What in the sam-hell are you doin', boy?" Bobby demanded again.

This time Sam acknowledged him, but only by raising a single finger to silence him.

"And who is going to make me?" Holman asked.

"I'm the one you wanted right?"

"Sam!"

"When you came here eight years ago, you didn't want Dean. You wanted me, right?" The sleazy, lecherous smile was all the answer Sam needed. He opened his arms, held his hands out to his side, and stepped closer to the bed. "I'm right here. You want me so much, then take me. But you let Dean go, and you leave him alone."

"I appreciate your offer," Holman answered with another smile. "I think I've heard it before." He looked down at Dean with an expression that turned Sam's stomach. "I don't think I'll be letting your brother go, because he and I have so much fun together." Holman's head snapped up. "But I'm not above letting you join the party."

The air in the room seemed to sink into itself.

Bobby blinked away the dark spots that suddenly danced across his vision.

Coy Holman was gone.

Sam lay sprawled where he'd collapsed, the top half of his body across the bed, his feet on the floor, and his left hand wrapped around Dean's wrist. Bobby rounded the bed quickly, but he already knew there was no point in checking; Sam was in the same condition Dean was, with the exception that Sam didn't have a circle of fingerprint bruises darkening around his throat.

Bobby could see what Sam had done at the last second, though, and even he had to admit it was good thinking. He'd used his last shred of consciousness to grab his brother's arm, to connect with him in the real world, in the hopes that they'd stay connected in whatever dreamworld Holman had cooked up for them. Maybe it would make it easier for Sam to break through to Dean than it had been for Bobby to do it all those years earlier.

There was another knock on the wall from the room next door. Bobby growled and pounded back.

Then he sighed and pulled Sam's feet up onto the bed, careful to not disturb the hold he had on his brother. And then, because there was nothing more he could do for either one of them, Bobby picked Dean's Colt up from the floor where Sam had dropped it. He perched himself on the foot of the bed and settled in to watch over them both until they returned from wherever they'd been taken.

* * *

Sam blinked and looked around. He wasn't surprised to realize he was standing in the basement he and Dean had found the day before. Holman had killed all of his victims in this basement when he was alive, and based on what little Dean had told him about his last encounter with the spirit, he'd killed all of his other victims in a dreamworld version of it. A nightmarish copy of a real world torture room that only Coy Holman could control.

He was surprised at how real it all felt, though. He could see his breath in the cold, damp air, and the only light that broke through the darkness was what little managed to shine through the filthy, broken windows. There was a heavy odor of mold, rot, and decay mixed with an earthy, coppery smell and something else, something musky, the origins of which Sam didn't even want to think about.

But the worst part was that Sam was alone.

He knew that Dean had to be there somewhere. Holman had said he wanted Sam to "join" the party, so he'd want them to be in the same place. He didn't know how long he had until Holman showed up, but he had to take advantage of whatever time he had. First things first, he had to find Dean. His heart and stomach both sank when he realized that he knew exactly where to look.

He walked toward the door, unsure of what he hoped for more. Part of him wanted to find Dean in that room, grab him up and get him the hell out of this place. But part of him hoped Dean was nowhere near it. If this was Holman's world, then that room would be filled with the 'toys' Sam had read about. And the thought of any of them having been used on Dean made his blood run cold.

He turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly.

The huddled figure in the far corner of the room answered every question he had and confirmed that most – if not all – of what he'd feared was true.

"Dean!" he called out as he ran across the rough concrete floor. "God, Dean!"

The only answer he received was a weak moan, one that sounded completely out of place coming from his brother's lips.

It also sounded far too young.

"Dean?"

He knelt down beside him and reached for his shoulder to roll him to his back, but Dean reacted first, flipping himself over and scooting away. As soon as he saw Dean's face, Sam understood why the voice had sounded so strange. He hadn't heard it in eight years. It was undeniably Dean lying on the floor in front of him.

But it was equally undeniable that Dean was no more than nineteen years old.

"What the hell ...?"

Sam jerked his hand away and sat back on his heels, looking down at himself quickly. If Dean was only nineteen in this place, then it would stand to reason that Sam should be only fourteen, but he didn't feel that young, and what he saw when he looked confirmed that he wasn't. He was the same height he was at twenty-two, and he was wearing the same jeans and shirt he'd had on in the motel room.

But Dean wasn't. Dean was in this world exactly the same as he had been the first time – the same age, wearing the same clothes, and Sam guessed being tortured the same way. But Sam's appearance made no sense. If Dean had been turned into a kid again, then why was Sam still a man?

"Dean?" he said again, gently reaching out and touching his shoulder. Dean flinched away, backed himself against the wall, and buried his head in his arms. It almost broke Sam completely to see it. Dean shouldn't act like this, not ever.

It was dark enough in the room that he couldn't see much, but Sam knew that Dean was hurt, and hurt badly. What was left of his shirt hung on him in tatters, and Sam could see streaks of blood and the lines of shallow cuts all over his chest. He was covered in bruises, the black and red and purple standing out from the paleness of Dean's skin even in the dim light. There were angry red marks around his wrists and dark stains on his jeans that couldn't have been anything but blood. Sam wondered what other injuries Dean had, the ones that Sam couldn't see, but at the same time, he found himself grateful that he didn't know.

Even at nineteen, there hadn't been much that could reduce Dean to a sobbing mess in the corner.

"S ... Sammy?"

Dean's confused, hesitant and years-too-young voice pulled all of Sam's attention back to him.

"Dean, hey. It's okay. I'm here. It's gonna be all right now."

"No!" Dean erupted from the floor, scrambling away from Sam, pressing his back into the concrete wall behind him. "No, you can't! Aren't supposed to!"

Sam didn't understand Dean's reaction. "No, Dean, it's okay."

"Leave you alone," Dean mumbled. "Leave Sam alone, leave him alone, leave him alone!" Dean threw his head back and screamed at the ceiling. "You leave him alone!"

Sam grabbed Dean's shoulders before he could get any further away from him. "No, Dean, listen to me."

Dean continued fighting against him, trying to pull away. He was shaking his head, and his words were coming out as a broken, confused jumble. "I'm here ... you're not ... he said ... promise ... if I gave ... run, Sam!"

Sam had to get this under control, and fast. Stepping into this nightmare hadn't calmed Dean's fear like Sam had hoped. If anything, his being there had made it worse. And suddenly Sam understood, understood why Dean had traded himself for Sam all those years ago, understood why Dean was so terrified of Holman.

He was scared of the bastard because of what it had done to him, whether he admitted that or not, and he had every right to be. But he was equally as scared that, if given the chance, Holman would do the same thing to Sam. Dean's fear of Holman wasn't solely for himself, and it never had been.

Sam tightened his grip on Dean's shoulders. "Dean. Dean! Look at me! Look!"

Dean's eyes finally focused on his brother, and he pressed a shaky hand against Sam's cheek. Fresh tears made their way down Dean's face. "No, Sammy. No, I tried. I ... couldn't. I didn't ... tried not to fight ... so sorry ..."

Of course Dean had fought. Sam had never doubted that. But hearing Dean apologize for it, hearing him say he should have just taken whatever Holman did to him, made Sam's blood boil. And knowing that he was the reason for it, that Holman had used a threat against him to force Dean into submission, was almost more than he could take.

"He didn't bring me here, Dean," Sam explained. "I came on my own. To get you. Don't you remember?"

"No no no," Dean muttered. "Need to run, Sammy. Run away ..."

"What do you see, Dean?" Sam asked as calmly as he could. "What do you see when you look at me? Do I look the way you think I should?"

Dean studied Sam's face for a few seconds, then shook his head slowly. "No, you're ... you're ... wrong."

"Wrong how?"

Sam had been trying to ignore that his older brother was suddenly four years younger than him, that he all but towered over a big brother who was suddenly much shorter than him. But now that he understood how Holman worked, the fears that he was playing on to keep Dean under his control, he knew that he couldn't keep ignoring it. He had to call Dean's attention to it, because he had to take advantage of it.

"You're big." Dean's eyes widened. Sam tried his hardest to pretend that he didn't see the streaks of red on Dean's face or the puffiness around his eyes that told him Dean had been crying for a long time before Sam had found him. "When'd you get so big, Sammy?"

"This isn't the real world, Dean," Sam said softly. "It's not happening the way you think it is. Holman's not even human. He's a mara, a nightmare demon and we're here to get rid of him."

Dean only shook his head, and Sam continued.

"I'm not fourteen, Dean. I'm almost twenty-three. And you're twenty-seven. We're not kids anymore. This is an incredibly realistic and vivid nightmare, that's all. It's a nightmare that Coy Holman is controlling, but it is not real."

Sam heard Holman laughing behind him. "You'll never convince him of that," he said. "Not again."

Sam saw the way Dean shrank back from the sound and spun around. Holman stood in the door, blocking what little light was filtering in from the outer room, but it didn't matter. There was light in the room now, as a hurricane lamp that sat on an old wooden table flickered to life. Sam forced himself not to look at Holman's 'toys' on the walls, because he didn't want to see which ones dripped with his brother's blood. And he wouldn't let himself look at Dean, because he didn't want to find those injuries he hadn't been able to see in the dark. Holman licked his lips as he started moving toward them.

Behind him, Sam could hear Dean whimpering in fear, and that was more than enough. No one made Dean sound like that. Sam pushed up from the floor, drew himself to his full height, and put himself directly between Holman and his brother's huddled form on the floor.

"Get the fuck away from my brother." Sam's voice was low, cold and deadly.

Holman stopped dead in his tracks when Sam stood up. His eyes traveled all the way from Sam's feet to the top of his head, but the lust and evil intent that Sam had expected to see, the looks he remembered Holman giving him eight years earlier, weren't there.

"This is not right," Holman muttered.

Sam decided to press whatever advantage he had at that moment, holding his arms out to the side and stepping forward. "What, you don't like what you see? You brought me here."

"No, you should not be like this."

"Like what? Unafraid of you? Standing up to you?"

"Tall!" Holman declared, stepping back. "I brought you here, and this is my world. I get what I want, Sam, and I want little boys. You are meant to be the child you were!"

"Yeah, well," Sam shrugged and glanced back down at Dean on the floor. Seeing the blood, the bruises, the rope burn and cuts he'd known marred his skin, and the burns, bite marks, and torn jeans he hadn't seen and hadn't wanted to, triggered something in Sam. He felt it surging through him, both familiar and not. Protectiveness, but augmented with a power that he'd never felt before. He didn't understand where it was coming from, didn't know if it was his psychic thing or something else, but he really didn't care. He'd use whatever means he had at his disposal to finish this. He hadn't been strong enough to save Dean the first time, but there was no way he was going to fail him again.

"Maybe I'm stronger than you."

"My world," Holman repeated. "This is my world!"

"I'm not afraid of you," Sam continued. "And I'm not going to let you hurt him again."

"No, this ... this is not right," Holman sputtered. "This is not the way it's supposed to be. You can't do this!"

"Scared, Coy?" Sam asked. Eight years of fear, anger, rage, hatred, all of it directed at this thing standing in front of him. He let it all show in his voice. "A mara. That's what you are. I killed you eight years ago, sent you to Hell, just so some stupid kid in a cemetery could summon your ass back as a demon."

Sam stepped forward as he talked, and he had to admit to himself that he took no small amount of pleasure from the fact that Holman backed away.

"What are you?" Holman asked. He was shaking his head, but Sam didn't know and didn't care if it was in denial or in confusion. "How ... how are you doing this?"

"Bet you thought you had it made as a demon, didn't you? You've gotten off on other people's fear your whole life. Thing is, though, if you feed on fear, and if people aren't afraid of you? You lose your power. You're nothing, Coy. You're just a mara. Just a nightmare. Nothing but a stupid dream."

"You stop this, Sammy. You are not supposed to be able to do this!"

Sam shook his head, and a smile made its way across his lips. He knew it wasn't a pleasant smile, dripping with hatred the way it did, but he really didn't care.

"No, I'm supposed to be fourteen and scared shitless." He stopped walking and lifted his hands to his sides. "But I'm not. I'm twenty-two and pissed as hell."

"If you don't fear me for yourself, fear for your brother. What I can do to him. What I already have."

"You can't do anything to him, because you're never touching him again. I won't let you."

"Do you have any idea what I can do to you?" Holman asked. "Look at your brother, Sammy. Ask him what I can do."

Sam glanced back for only a second, but it was long enough to see that Dean was no longer whimpering and cowering. He was still sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall, but he was watching Sam with eyes that were fully aware and spoke of quickly forming understanding.

"And you can't do anything to me," he answered, turning back to Holman. "Because Dean won't let you."

"Look at him!" Holman demanded. "He can't even stand up. How is he going to stop me?"

"You really don't understand what you've gotten yourself into, do you?" Sam shook his head. "You wanted to use us against each other, but you can't. Not when we're together. Because we won't let you."

It was true, every word. They would protect each other, bolster each other, and weaken Holman's power together. And Sam could see from the look on Holman's face that it was already working.

He didn't understand how he knew the things he did, and he wasn't going to mention them to Dean, but he felt the power growing inside him just as he could feel it sliding from Holman's grasp. Just a little bit more, and Sam would be able to take control completely.

"I'm done with you, Sammy. You need to leave now."

A flash of light exploded around them, but when it faded, Sam was still there, still standing between Holman and Dean, and still smiling.

"You wanted me here, Coy. You're just gonna have to deal with me."

He could hear Dean behind him, grunting with the effort of pulling himself up on the wall, and he risked another glance over his shoulder. Dean was still nineteen, still hurt, still shaking and probably still terrified, but he wasn't broken anymore. He was ready to do what it took to protect Sam, just as Sam was going to do everything in his power to protect Dean.

It was time to end this.

He may not have understood where the power was coming from, but that didn't mean he wouldn't use it. Both because he could, and because he had to. Holman had controlled this place for too long, and Sam wasn't going to allow it anymore. He wasn't going to let him hurt Dean, and he wasn't going to let Dean be afraid. He sure as hell wasn't going to let Holman win. And because he wasn't going to let it happen, he knew, somehow, that it wouldn't.

The world around them was changing.

It started with the flame from the hurricane lamp, but it was growing, spreading across the room, illuminating the dark corners, chasing the shadows and nightmares away. Holman's 'toys' were disappearing from the wall one by one.

"No!" Coy screamed. "You aren't strong enough to do this!"

"Are you so sure of that?" Sam asked. "Don't I look strong enough to you?"

The transformation was done; the darkness was gone, replaced by a comfortable orange glow. The room was empty now, except for the table and the lamp on it. It was just four walls, a floor and a ceiling, just a room in a basement like any other. There was nothing to be afraid of there.

Sam stood his ground in Holman's basement of horrors, and Dean was on his feet just behind Sam's left shoulder. Sam opened his mind in a way he'd never been able to before, and suddenly he didn't just understand Dean's fear, he felt it, exactly as Dean had since he'd first seen Holman in their motel room that night. He felt every moment of terror Dean had experienced at the monster's hands, and every doubt and fear that he'd been left with for more than eight years. And then he felt Dean push it all away.

Dean stepped forward, came to a stop at Sam's side, and started to change.

Sam would have helped if he'd needed to, but he didn't, because Dean was doing it himself. Sam stood aside and watched as Dean's hair darkened and his face hardened, watched his brother's youth fall away and the last bits of innocence and confusion disappear from his eyes, watched him age, until he was twenty-seven again. The blood, bruises and other injuries that covered his face and body hadn't faded, but if they were evidence of the scars that Coy Holman had left behind, then they probably never would.

The marks on Dean's body weren't what mattered to Sam, though. Dean was on his feet, standing tall and ready to fight despite them, holding his fear at bay and prepared to protect his brother at all costs, and that was what Sam needed. It was what they both needed, and it was what they were giving each other.

Sam turned back to face Holman once more.

"You're in our world now, motherfucker."


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

Holman bellowed and charged toward them, but Sam flicked his hand toward him in the same dismissive way Holman had that night in the motel room. And just like Sam, Holman's shock at being frozen in place showed on his face.

Then Sam twitched his finger, and Holman's back slammed into the wall across from the table.

"No!" The sound of Holman's voice, which years before had filled Sam with fear, now almost made him laugh. He didn't sound like a monster anymore. He sounded like a child throwing a temper tantrum. "This is my world! You cannot do this!"

Sam tilted his head. "Funny, because I think I just did." He'd managed to rescue his brother and take control away from Holman. The only thing left to do was kill the bastard.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas."

Sam turned his head toward Dean, nodded and smiled. Maybe he and Bobby couldn't exorcise Holman in the outside world, but with Sam holding him still, there was no reason why Dean couldn't do it in the dreamworld.

"Dean, you stop!" Holman demanded as he struggled against Sam's hold on him. "You know better than to make me angry!"

"Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio."

"I don't think he's listening to you anymore," Sam said. He was walking toward Holman slowly, threateningly, and enjoying the demon's discomfort far more than he probably should have been.

"Ergo draco maledicte et sectio."

"No! Dean! Think about what I'll do to you when I get free. And I will get free! You cannot kill me!"

"Kill you?" Sam said smugly. "Oh, Dean's not going to kill you."

"Ergo draco maledicte et legio secta diabolica."

"He just wants to send you back to Hell." Sam was close enough to Holman that he could lean forward and whisper in his ear, just as he'd done to Dean all those years ago. He could say him anything he wanted, because there was no way Dean would ever hear him say it. "I'm the one that's going to kill you."

Holman started to choke as the ritual went on. Black smoke was starting to pour from his mouth, nose, and eyes as he fought to hold his chosen form together.

"This is the lesson you didn't learn last time, Coy."

"Ut Ecclésiam tuam secúra tibi fácias servire libertáte."

"If you want to win, don't pick a fight with a Winchester."

"Te rogámus, audi nos."

Sam grabbed Holman's hair and yanked his head back, then leaned down until his lips almost touched the demon's ear.

"And if you want to live, don't fuck with my brother."

"Domine."

Sam let go of the monster's hair, turned away and fell to his knees as Holman's body fell apart, reduced to a formless blackness that could no longer hold itself together in human form. He could see Dean a few feet away, down on one knee with his arms over his head. Above them was an angry, swirling cloud of greasy black smoke – all that remained of Coy Holman.

It rose toward the ceiling of the basement as it was pulled out of the dreamworld and back down to Hell. Its upward movement suddenly halted, as though something were preventing it from leaving. It changed direction and started sinking back to the ground, but only made it a few inches before it was stopped again. Stuck between the forces that pushed and pulled against it, all it could do was spin in place as small tendrils snaked out from it, seeking an escape that it would never find.

Sam lifted his head and smiled.

The glow started in the middle, faint at first but growing brighter. As it spread out across the cloud, the colors deepened, changing from yellow to orange to red, and streaks of what looked like lightning started to appear. By the time the glow from within became flames that consumed it from the outside, both Sam and Dean were on their feet.

The explosion started in the center, a shockwave of blackness that shattered the smoke cloud into a million pieces that it immediately pulled back and into oblivion. The force of it knocked them both to the floor.

Coy Holman was gone, and this time, there'd be no coming back.

Sam immediately pushed himself up and half-ran/half-crawled to his brother's side.

Dean was lying face-down where he'd fallen, one arm flung out to his side and the other under him, and so far as Sam could tell, he hadn't moved since he'd hit the floor.

"Dean!" He grabbed Dean's outstretched arm and rolled him over to his back. Dean's eyes were closed, and the fresh blood that ran from the broken skin above his left eye told Sam that he'd slammed his face into the floor when he'd fallen. That didn't stop Sam from grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, though.

"Hey, Dean, wake up."

Dean's eyelids fluttered a few times before finally opening all the way, and he blinked up at Sam in confusion. After a few seconds, he pressed his hands against the floor and started pushing himself up.

"Hey, easy. Take it easy." Sam helped him finish sitting up and waited for him to regain his balance. He had every intention of letting go of Dean's arm once he stopped wobbling, but that wasn't what happened. Before Dean could say anything, definitely before he could protest, Sam wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug. He didn't even feel the urge to cry, until he realized that Dean was returning it instead of pulling away.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered into his brother's hair. "I am so sorry."

Dean didn't answer him, but Sam could feel him shaking his head. A few moments passed before three taps on Sam's back told him that Dean was done with the hugging. But Sam wasn't, so he didn't let go.

"Sam," Dean finally said. "Can't breathe here."

Sam finally released him and pulled away, wiping the tears from his cheeks quickly in the hopes that Dean wouldn't notice them.

"Wuss."

Sam snorted; of course he noticed. "Asshole."

"So," Dean said, "we get him?"

"Yeah," Sam answered with a nod of his head. "We got him."

"Then why are we still here?"

Sam shrugged. "I'm not really sure, but I think I ... well, we took over. We're controlling it now. I think we'll be here until we decide to leave."

"So can we? Please?"

"Sure," Sam said. He ignored the pleading and slightly fearful tone behind Dean's words and pushed himself to his feet, then reached back down and helped Dean to his. Holman was dead and they were in control, but the adrenaline that had been feeding him before was gone, and Dean was still too hurt and weak to stand on his own. Sam pulled Dean's right arm across his shoulders and kept his left arm behind Dean's back as he turned around.

"It's ours, huh?" Dean asked as Sam walked them toward the door. "We can do whatever we want to it?"

Sam stopped in the door and looked at Dean, who was staring across his shoulder and back into the room. Sam adjusted his hold slightly and stepped to the side, so that Dean could look back more easily. He could see the memories written on his brother's face, even if he didn't share them all. He knew that he'd never ask again, never demand that Dean fill in any more of the blanks. The memories they did share were more than enough, and Sam knew he'd be having nightmares about what he imagined had happened for months. He had a feeling that if he knew what had actually happened, he'd never sleep again.

"What do you want to do to it, Dean?"

Dean swallowed hard and stared down at the floor. Then he took a deep breath, raised his head, and looked Sam right in the eye.

"Burn it down."

"Okay," Sam answered softly.

And because it was their world and they wanted it that way, fire could burn concrete, and the flames they walked through on their way out didn't touch them.

* * *

Sam opened his eyes slowly and found himself lying on the bed in the motel room, with Bobby standing beside him, looking down.

"Sam?" Bobby said hesitantly. "You okay?"

Sam nodded slowly and looked around, giving himself a few moments to adjust to reality again. He didn't know why he'd half expected to wake up in the basement, but he was glad that he hadn't. As the fog of confusion lifted, he remembered the last few minutes of his time in the dreamworld. He remembered standing in the yard with Dean, watching the flames consume the basement from below. Then the white light had flashed again, and he'd opened his eyes back where he belonged.

"Did you get him?" Bobby asked. "Is it over?"

"Yeah," Sam croaked. His eyes stung and his throat was raw, almost like the smoke he'd been standing in had been real. If it had all been a dream, he shouldn't still feel it, should he? But he did. And if he was still feeling the effects of the smoke, then Dean had to be ...

"Dean!"

Sam bolted upright on the bed.

"Don't yell so loud," Dean answered quietly. "My head hurts."

Dean was still lying on the bed where he'd been since Sam had put him there. The bruises Holman had left on his neck when he'd tried to strangle him were still there, and he looked as rough as twelve miles of bad road, but Dean's eyes were open and he was almost smiling. That was more than enough for Sam.

"He woke up a few minutes before you did," Bobby explained. "Cussing a blue streak because you weren't awake yet."

Sam realized that his hand was still wrapped around Dean's wrist, and he rubbed the back of it with his thumb. Dean's smile grew into a smirk.

"Wuss."

Sam laughed. The confused expression on Bobby's face made him laugh even harder. When Dean chuckled along with him, Sam nodded and let go of his arm.

"Yeah, I am."

"You two are ten kinds of crazy, and Sam, the next time you do somethin' that friggin' stupid, I just might kill ya myself. Taunting Holman like that ..."

"You did what?"

All of the humor was gone from Dean's voice, and Sam rolled his eyes. "It worked, didn't it? You're alive, I'm fine, and Holman's dead."

"Dead?" Bobby's voice was filled with disbelief, and he looked back and forth between them. "You killed a demon?"

"Yeah," Sam answered. He looked down at the bed and avoided Bobby's eyes. "I guess if you're not afraid of a fear demon, it makes him weaker. And if he's using a nightmare to scare you, you can take control of it."

"And if you're really lucky ..." Dean's voice was raw and ragged, and he sounded like he'd screamed himself hoarse. Sam cringed when he realized that he probably had. "Sam can blow it up with his brain."

"Sam can do what now?"

Sam shook his head. "No, nothing like that. It was just ... the things that happened in there were what Holman wanted, right? So I ... we turned it around. We wanted him to die, so he did. Just used his own power against him, that's all."

As far as Sam was concerned, that was all it was. At least, that was all he'd ever admit to. Neither Bobby nor Dean ever needed to know what he'd done, how he'd done it, or that he'd done it by himself. And it wasn't like he knew how he'd done it anyway.

"Hey," he said, turning back to Dean again. "How're you feeling?"

"Head hurts," Dean answered. "That's all."

"No, it's not," Sam said. "I know it's not."

"It was a dream, Sam. It wasn't ..."

"Yes, it was," Sam interrupted. "Dean ..."

"'Scuse me a minute, boys." Bobby held his hand up and walked toward the door. "I'm just gonna go get ... something outta my car. I'll be back."

Sam smiled at the obvious excuse, but he was thankful to Bobby for leaving all the same. Because the conversation he and Dean were about to have needed to happen, but no one else needed to hear it.

Sam pushed himself up on his knees and crawled to the other end of the bed, then turned around and sat next to Dean's pillow. He settled back against the headboard and sighed. Dean looked up at him, obviously waiting for Sam to start.

"The smoke stung my eyes," Sam finally said. "And made my throat hurt."

"Yeah," Dean said with a small nod. "Me, too."

"And I can still feel it. Even though it was never 'real,' and it never 'happened,' my eyes still sting and my throat still hurts."

Dean turned his head on the pillow and stared across the room.

"Don't, Dean," Sam begged. "Please. What happened in there it was ... I don't know. I don't _want_ to know." And he hoped Dean could hear the truth of that in his voice, because he really didn't. "But I do know that whatever it was, however ... bad it was, whatever it felt like, you can still feel it."

Dean closed his eyes then, and if silent tears were starting to roll down his cheeks, Sam wasn't going to mention them.

"It did happen, and it was real. Then and now. And you need to admit that so you can see it for what it really was."

Dean shook his head and opened his eyes, but he kept his face turned away from Sam. "I know what it really was," he whispered. "I've always known."

Sam tilted his head in confusion. "Then why did you say ...?"

"Because knowing what it was doesn't mean I wanted to admit it. And I didn't think it would ever come up again." He half-shrugged. "When we got here and it started all over again, I just ... didn't know what else to do."

"So when you said you dealt with it ...?"

"I wasn't lying."

Sam nodded; he could accept that. "I guess all I really need to know right now, Dean, is are you okay?"

Dean huffed out a humorless laugh. "No." He took a shaky breath and blew it out. "But I will be. He's dead this time, right? Really dead?"

"Yeah," Sam answered.

"That helps." Dean turned his head on the pillow again and looked up at Sam with a smile that spoke of pain and sadness, but also a small sense of hope. "And maybe I'll tell you more than that someday, but not right now. I've had enough touchy-feely crap for one day. First a hug, now a talk ... you don't expect me to do the 'feelings' thing too, do you?"

But Sam wasn't ready to let it go, not yet. He still had one thing left to say.

"What you did for me that night, Dean ..."

"Was what I had to do," Dean interrupted. "Because it's my job, and because it was the right thing to do. You're my little brother, Sam. If I don't take care of you, who will?"

Sam was trying to figure out how to answer that when he felt Dean nudge his leg with his hand.

"Besides, you'd do the same thing for me, right?"

Sam gave a crooked smile. "I think I just did."

Dean nodded and smiled back. "Nah, but you tried to. Not your fault I'm too awesome to need it."

Sam snorted. "Dude, I was so totally the big brother."

"Were not."

"Was to!" Sam argued. "You were nineteen, and I was twenty-two. That so does make me the big brother."

"In your dreams, Sammy-boy."

It was making light of a serious situation, gallows humor at its finest, and Sam knew it. But it felt righter than any conversation they'd had in days, and that was all that mattered. It meant they were already getting back to normal. It meant it was really over.

It meant they were going to be fine.

Bobby chose that moment to walk back through the door, with absolutely nothing in his hands. Sam smiled at him, and Bobby shrugged.

"Whatever you say, Dean," Sam said. "You're the big brother. But I'm still telling you to go to sleep, because I know you need it."

Dean smiled, nodded, closed his eyes, and slowly rolled on to his side, facing away from Sam. But he turned back over suddenly and looked up at him with panicked eyes.

"What time is it?" Dean demanded.

Sam glanced across at Bobby, who looked as confused as Sam was at Dean's strange question, and then back down. "Relax and go to sleep, Dean. It doesn't matter what ..."

"What time is it?"

Obviously there was no placating Dean until he had an answer, so Sam squinted down at his watch. "It's two in the morning. Why?"

Dean smiled, then turned back to his side again, obviously contented with the answer.

"Dean?" Sam asked. He put his hand on Dean's arm and leaned over him, trying to see his face. "Why does it matter what time it is?"

"Because," Dean said. "Check the date, Forgetful Jones." He yawned, grinned at Sam, and then said sleepily, "Happy birthday, Sammy."


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**Johnston, Iowa**

**May 2, 2006**

The morning dawned bright and sunny, with a cloudless blue sky.

He knew that the boys were fine, that they'd woken up without a problem and even talked for a while. He also knew that they'd both fallen asleep not long after and had slept peacefully for the rest of the night. He figured it was their exhaustion that kept the nightmares at bay, but even if it was only for that one night, it was enough.

He'd spent the whole night awake, both awed that they had killed a demon and trying to figure out exactly how they'd done it. Some of the things he'd heard in the abbreviated reports he'd been given worried him, but he wasn't going to dwell on them. Taking control of the dreamworld because of a lack of fear seemed to be a rational explanation for it, and it was the only one either of them could really give. None of them knew what Sam was really capable of, not even Sam, so there was no reason to be worried.

But he felt no small amount of pride that he'd been right about them needing to be together, and that knowledge alone was almost worth what they'd been through. They looked out for each other, kept each other sane, and protected each other from the monsters. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be, though? Wasn't that what brothers were supposed to do? Wasn't that exactly what they'd been raised to do?

He heard the people in the next room moving around, gathering their things and getting ready to check out. It had been an exciting couple of days for everyone in those two motel rooms, even if it had been the kind of excitement that his heart could do without.

He heard a door close, followed by voices growing louder then fading away as they passed his window and door. He stood up from his chair, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain back just an inch or two. Just enough to see them.

He just needed to see them.

They were laughing, all of them, and he couldn't help but smile. He'd overheard them talking in their room earlier, something about chili dogs and cheese fries and maybe catching a movie together before they split up again. They had a victory to celebrate, and a birthday. Families should be together for things like that, he knew, and he was grateful that they had each other even as he wished he could be a real part of it again. He wanted nothing more than to go to them, go with them, but he knew he couldn't.

He had to protect them, even if they didn't understand why. Everything he'd fought for, everything he cared about, everything he loved in the world would be lost if he couldn't keep them safe.

The well-loved, shiny black car backed out of its parking space and pulled out of the lot, leaving the man in the baseball cap standing next to his car.

Staring directly at his window.

He pulled the curtain open wider, safe in the knowledge that the boys couldn't see him, and waved. Bobby nodded his head once, climbed into his car, and drove away, following Sam and Dean to wherever they were going.

John Winchester was still smiling as he turned away.


End file.
